North and South

With an essay by V. S. Pritchett.

''How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?''

Elizabeth Gaskell''s compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops...