About the book

About North and South By Elizabeth "A Romantic Novel" Annotated Edition

A younger version of Daddy Warbucks meets the female version of Eugene Debs, and mayhem (and love) ensues. An uptight girl meets a working-class boy who's made his fortune, and mayhem (and love) ensues.Two way different stories, right?Wrong. These seemingly polar opposite scenarios both describe what happens in North and South when Southern (southern England, that is) belle Margaret Hale encounters Northern self-made man John Thornton. Three hundred pages, multiple deaths and some fierce social commentary later, they realize that okay, yes they do like-like each other.Let's get back to that "fierce social commentary" part. Because if anyone deserves to be called fierce, it's Elizabeth Gaskell.When it was first published in 1854, North and South was met with some pretty harsh criticism. Its editor, the super famous Charles Dickens, said the story was way longer than it needed to be. But more criticism was directed at the fact that Elizabeth Gaskell (a woman!) dared to write sympathetically about the rights of English workers. Even right up until the 1930s, critics' main view of Elizabeth Gaskell was that she "makes a creditable effort to overcome her deficiencies [as a woman] but all in vain". Yeesh. Sexist much?

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