North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell, 1854
A parson's daughter moves to a smoke-blackened mill town and finds her convictions about class, masters and love tested by a manufacturer who believes no one owes anybody anything.
Elizabeth Gaskell
1810–1865
Gaskell wrote North and South in weekly instalments for Dickens's Household Words and chafed at the strict length; Dickens edited her copy without always consulting her.
Feels like memory, longing and faith.
Describing the place you love to someone who will never see it.
She saw it in dreams more vivid than life, and as she fell away to slumber at nights her memory wandered in all its pleasant places. But her heart was opened to this girl: “Oh, Bessy, I loved the home we have left so dearly! I wish you could see it. I cannot tell you half its beauty. There are great trees standing all about it, with their branches stretching long and level, and making a deep shade of rest even at noonday. And yet, though every leaf may seem still, there is a continual rushing sound of movement all around—not close at hand. Then sometimes the turf is as soft and fine as velvet; and sometimes quite lush with the perpetual moisture of a little, hidden, tinkling brook near at hand. Books by Elizabeth Gaskell
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