Elizabeth Gaskell

`she tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.' North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret's ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This Norton Critical Edition of Gaskell’s first novel is based on the 1854 Fifth Edition, the last edition corrected by the author. “Contexts” includes letters related to Mary Barton’s publication as well as Gaskell’s reaction to her harshest critics. Ten contemporary reviews reflect the dual nature of the novel’s critical reception: one group valuing its eye-opening moral energy and concern for the suffering of the working classes and the other group taking Gaskell to task for the deceptive implications of her perceived flawed reasoning. A section featuring fifteen illustrations from the novel offers readers the opportunity to explore narrative emphases. “Criticism” collects seventeen major interpretations of the novel’s central themes. Contributors include Kathleen Tillotson, Richard D. Altick, John Lucas, Catherine Gallagher, Hilary Schor, Deborah Epstein, Susan Zlotnick, Jonathan H. Grossman, and Liam Corley, among others. A Chronology of Gaskell’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

'Gaskell's shocking, moving and contemporary account of the corrosive effects of injustice and poverty' Sunday Telegraph Mary Barton is the pretty daughter of a factory worker who finds herself dreaming of a better life when the mill-owner's charming son, Henry, starts to court her. She rejects her childhood friend Jem's affections in the hope of marrying Henry and escaping from the hard and bitter life that is the fate of the workers, who are resentfully dependent on the callous mill-owners for their livelihoods. But when Henry is shot dead in the street Jem becomes the prime suspect and Mary finds her loyalties tested to the limit.

'A really remarkable picture of the reality, as well as the prosperity, of northern industrial life, and an interesting examination of changing social conscience' Joanna TrollopeMilton is a sooty, noisy northern town centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll in the south, Margaret Hale is initially shocked by the social unrest and poverty she finds in her new hometown. However, as she begins to befriend her neighbours, and her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JENNY UGLOW

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Opening with the death of James Leigh on Christmas Morning, 'Lizzie Leigh' tells the story of his family, and in particular his estranged daughter, the eponymous Lizzie, who disappeared from their lives when she became pregnant out of wedlock. When he dies, they go to Manchester to look for her and her brother, Will, falls in love with the respectable Susan Palmer, but feels he cannot declare his love because of his sister's disgrace. Elizabeth Gaskell here deals with important issues that were often ignored during the Victorian era. In 'A Dark Night's Work,' Edward Wilkins, a rich attorney, wants only the best for his daughter, Ellinor, who is in love with Ralph Corbet, despite Ralph's father believing an attorney's daughter to be beneath him. In a moment of passion Edward kills his partner, Mr Dunster, who had been embezzling his money and thus threatening Ellinor's chances of marrying the man she loves. It is a classic tale of the timeless themes of love and guilt.

The most consistent of all series in terms of language control, length, and quality of story. David R. Hill, Director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading.

The narrator, Miss Greatorex, is invited to join a party of friends who meet on a weekly basis 'round the sofa' in Mrs Dawson's house. When Mrs Dawson mentions her cousin Lady Ludlow, Miss Greatorex wants to find out more about her and the storytelling begins.

Presents a collection of linked short stories about the inhabitants of the eponymous small provincial town. Interweaving comic episodes with social comment, this title is a celebration of the better side of human nature, in which kindness and generosity of spirit triumph over adversity.

Paul Manning becomes clerk to the engineer of a new railway line, Mr Holdsworth. Manning introduces Holdsworth to his distant relative, the Holmans. The engineer and Phillis Holman fall in love, although neither declares their feelings to the other. Holdsworth confides to Manning that it is his intention to ask for Phillis' hand in marriage.

In this witty and poignant story the railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes yet further agitation not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies. Meanwhile Miss Matty Jenkyns nurses her own broken heart after she was forced to give up the man she loved when she was a young girl.

Roman Elizabet Gaskell "Sever i Jug" - eto istorija ljubvi, rasskazannaja v luchshikh traditsijakh viktorianskoj literatury. Glavnaja geroinja, urozhenka Juzhnoj Anglii Margaret Khejl, vynuzhdena pereekhat v severnye promyshlennye rajony. Vpechatlitelnaja devushka gluboko vozmuschena uzhasnymi uslovijami, v kotorykh zhivut rabochie, odnako ee negodovanie protiv vladeltsa fabriki Dzhona Torntona nevolno pererastaet v nezhnoe chuvstvo. Gerojam na protjazhenii romana prikhoditsja preodolevat mnozhestvo predrassudkov, uchitsja bolee shiroko i polno videt mir, ne delja ego na chernoe i beloe, na sever i jug, uchitsja dobrote i chelovechnosti.

Elizabet Gaskell - znamenitaja pisatelnitsa Viktorianskoj epokhi, prichisljaemaja, narjadu s Charlzom Dikkensom, Uiljamom Mejkpisom Tekkereem i Sharlottoj Bronte, k blestjaschej plejade anglijskikh romanistov XIX veka. Proizvedenija Gaskell, povestvujuschie o slozhnykh sudbakh ljudej, o vlasti ljubvi i dukhovnykh iskanijakh, vysoko otsenival uzhe upomjanutyj Dikkens, pechatavshij ikh v svoem zhurnale. K sozhaleniju, v Rossii tvorchestvo pisatelnitsy poluchilo ne stol shirokoe rasprostranenie, kak vo vsem mire. Do sikh por iz ee nasledija na russkij jazyk bylo perevedeno tolko dva romana: "Meri Barton" i "Krenford". V nastojaschem izdanii vpervye na russkom jazyke publikuetsja roman Elizabet Gaskell "Sever i Jug" - istorija ljubvi, rasskazannaja v luchshikh traditsijakh viktorianskoj literatury. Do sikh por pochitateli tvorchestva Elizabet Gaskell v Rossii imeli vozmozhnost poznakomitsja s etim romanom tolko po prekrasnoj ekranizatsii BBC 2004 goda. Glavnaja geroinja, urozhenka Juzhnoj Anglii Margaret Khejl, vynuzhdena pereekhat v severnye promyshlennye rajony. Vpechatlitelnaja devushka gluboko vozmuschena uzhasnymi uslovijami, v kotorykh zhivut rabochie, odnako ee negodovanie protiv vladeltsa fabriki Dzhona Torntona nevolno pererastaet v nezhnoe chuvstvo. Gerojam na protjazhenii romana prikhoditsja preodolevat mnozhestvo predrassudkov, uchitsja bolee shiroko i polno videt mir, ne delja ego na chernoe i beloe, na sever i jug, uchitsja dobrote i chelovechnosti.

Elizabeth Gaskell's panoramic novel of Victorian England, adapted for the stage by the author of Iron and The James Plays. Manchester in the 1840s. By day, Mary Barton works in a dress shop making gowns for the daughters of the newly moneyed mill owners. By night, Mary aspires to join their class. As she strives to better herself, murder, intrigue and romance take over her life and the lives of those she loves. Fast-paced, epic and exciting, Mary Barton presents a panorama of Manchester life from the mill owners' new prosperity to the thousands of ordinary people living and dying in their factories. Rona Munro's adaptation of Mary Barton was premiered at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006.

"Cranford" is a humorous account of a nineteenth-century English village dominated by a group of genteel but modestly circumstanced women. By eschewing the conventional marriage plot with its nubile heroines and focusing instead on a group of middle-aged and elderly spinsters, Elizabeth Gaskell did something highly unusual within the novel genre. Through her masterful management of the novel's tone, she underscores the value and dignity of single women's lives even as she causes us to laugh at her characters' foibles. Charles Dickens was the first of many readers to extol its wit and charm, and it has consistently been Gaskell's most popular work.

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Emeritus John Chapple, University of Hull. The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing. This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, and to trace the development of her art. As diverse in setting as in subject matter, these tales move from the gentle comedy of life in a small English country town in Dr Harrison's Confessions, to atmospheric horror in far north-west Wales with The Doom of the Griffiths. The story of Cousin Phillis, her masterly tale of love and loss, is a subtle, complex and perceptive analysis of changes in English national life during an industrial age, while the gripping Lois the Witch recreates the terrors of the Salem witchcraft trials in seventeenth-century New England, as Gaskell shrewdly shows the numerous roots of this furious outbreak of delusion. Whimsically modified fairy tales are set in a French chateau, while an engaging love story poetically evokes peasant life in wine-growing Germany.

This Norton Critical Edition of her best-selling novel is annotated and edited by preeminent Gaskell scholar Alan Shelston. "Contexts" includes contemporary reviews and correspondence related to North and South, along with the full text of Gaskell’s 1850 short story "Lizzie Leigh," which, like North and South, is set in industrial Manchester and deals with strong working women. This topic is further addressed in Bessie Rayner Parkes’s essay on Victorian working women. "Criticism" collects eleven assessments of the novel, among them Louis Cazamian’s 1904 study of industrial fiction and Hilary Schor’s recent study of North and South in the context of discourse analysis. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

From the author of North and South and Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford is a standalone publication of Elizabeth Gaskell's best-known work, with a critical introduction by Patricia Ingham in Penguin Classics. Cranford depicts the lives and preoccupations of the inhabitants of a small village - their petty snobberies, appetite for gossip, and loyal support for each other in times of need This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty, But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reapparance of long-lost relatives. to Lady Glenmire, who shocks everyone by marrying the doctor. When men do appear, such as 'modern' Captain Brown or Matty's suitor from the past, they bring disruption and excitement to the everyday life of Cranford. In her introduction, Patricia Ingham places the novel in its literary and historical context, and discusses the theme of female friendship and Gaskell's narrative technique. This edition also contains an account of Gaskell's childhood in Knutsford, on which Cranford is based, appendices on fashion and domestic duties supplemented by illustrations, a chronology of Gaskell's life and works, suggestions for further reading, and explanatory notes. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, winning the attention of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was published in his journals. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, whose biography she wrote. If you enjoyed Cranford, you may like Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, also available in Penguin Classics.

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelgänger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster Gaskell’s last novel, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family relationships – father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter – all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue. Despite its underlying seriousness, the prevailing tone is one of comedy. Gaskell vividly portrays the world of the late 1820s and the forces of change within it, and her vision is always humane and progressive. The story is full of acute observation and sympathetic character-study: the feudal squire clinging to old values, his naturalist son welcoming the new world of science, the local doctor and his scheming second wife, the two girls brought together by their parent’s marriage…