Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
The Meanings Of Home In Elizabeth Gaskells Fiction
Download The Meanings Of Home In Elizabeth Gaskells Fiction full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Meanings Of Home In Elizabeth Gaskells Fiction ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fiction by : Carolyn Lambert
Download or read book The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fiction written by Carolyn Lambert and published by Victorian Secrets. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this beautifully written study, Carolyn Lambert explores the ways in which Elizabeth Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the stresses and strains of the external world. Gaskell’s fictional homes often fail to provide a place of safety: doors and windows are ambiguous openings through which death can enter, and are potent signifiers of entrapment as well as protective barriers. The underlying fragility of Gaskell’s concept of home is illustrated by her narratives of homelessness, a state she uses to represent psychological, social, and emotional separation. By drawing on Gaskell’s novels, letters, and non-fiction writings, Lambert shows how her detailed descriptions of domestic interiors allow for nuanced and unconventional interpretations of character and behaviour. Lambert argues that Gaskell’s own experience was that of an outsider whose own difficulties are reflected in her multi-faceted and complex portrayals of home in her fiction.
Book Synopsis The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fiction by : Lambert, Carolyn
Download or read book The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fiction written by Lambert, Carolyn and published by Victorian Secrets Limited. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this beautifully written study, Carolyn Lambert explores the ways in which Elizabeth Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the external world. Gaskell’s fictional homes often fail to provide a place of safety: doors and windows are ambiguous openings through which death can enter, and are potent signifiers of entrapment as well as protective barriers. The underlying fragility of Gaskell’s concept of home is illustrated by her narratives of homelessness, a state she uses to represent psychological, social, and emotional separation. By drawing on novels, letters and non-fiction writings, Lambert shows how Gaskell’s detailed descriptions of domestic interiors allow for nuanced and unconventional interpretations of character and behaviour, and evince a complex understanding of the significance of home for the construction of identity, gender and sexuality. Lambert’s Gaskell is an outsider whose own dilemmas and conflicts are reflected in the intricate and multi-faceted portrayals of home in her fiction.
Book Synopsis Elizabeth Gaskell’s Smaller Stories by : Carolyn Lambert
Download or read book Elizabeth Gaskell’s Smaller Stories written by Carolyn Lambert and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-locates Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘smaller stories’ in the literary and cultural context of the nineteenth century. While Gaskell is recognised as one of the major novelists of her time, the short stories that make up a large proportion of her published work have not yet received the critical attention they deserve. This study re-claims them as an indispensable part of her literary output that enables us to better contextualize and assess her achievement holistically as a highly-skilled woman of letters. The periodicals in which Gaskell’s shorter pieces were published offer a microcosm of nineteenth-century society, and Gaskell took full advantage of the medium to apply a consistent and barbed challenge to cultural and gendered constructs of roles and social behaviour. Although her eminently readable prose still flows easily in her short stories, it is less likely to elide the sharp corners of domestic violence, the disabling experiences of women, the pain of death and loss, and the complications of family life.
Book Synopsis The Significance of Fabrics in the Writings of Elizabeth Gaskell by : Amanda Ford
Download or read book The Significance of Fabrics in the Writings of Elizabeth Gaskell written by Amanda Ford and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Gaskell’s writings abound in references to a cultural materiality encompassing different types of fabric, stuffs, calicoes, chintzes and fine-point lace. These are not merely the motifs of the Realist genre but reveal a complex polysemy. Utilizing a metonymic examination of these tropes, this volume exposes the dramatic structural and socio-economic upheaval generated by industrialization, urbanization and the widening sphere of empire. The material evidence testifies to the technological and production innovations evolving diachronically for the period, and the evolution of Manchester as the industrial ‘Cottonpolis’ that clothed the world by the 1840s. This volume analyses Gaskell’s manipulation of the materiality, arguing its firm roots lie in the quotidian of women’s domestic and provincial life within the growing ranks of the middle classes. Exploring Gaskell’s tactile imagination, an embodied relationship with fabrics and sewing, a function of her daily life from an early age, this volume provides insight into the sensory aspects of cloth and its ability to stir affective responses, emotions and memories, whereby worn fabrics and even the absence of previous textile treasures, is poignant, recreating layers of recollection. This book aims to restore the pulsating, dynamic context of ordinary women’s dressed lives and presents innovative interpretations of Gaskell’s texts.
Book Synopsis Novel Politics by : Isobel Armstrong
Download or read book Novel Politics written by Isobel Armstrong and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novel Politics aims to change the current consensus of thinking about the nineteenth-century novel. This assumes that the novel is structured by bourgeois ideology and morality, so that its default position is conservative and hegemonic. Such critique comes alike from Marxists, readers of nineteenth-century liberalism, and critics making claims for the working-class novel, and systematically under-reads democratic imaginations and social questioning in novels of the period. To undo such readings means evolving a new praxis of critical writing. Rather than addressing the explicitly political and deeply limited accounts of the machinery of franchise and ballot in texts, it is important to create a poetics of the novel that opens up its radical aspects. This can be done partly by taking a new look at some classic nineteenth-century political texts (Mill, De Tocqueville, Hegel), but centrally by exploring four claims: the novel is an open Inquiry (compare philosophical Inquiries of the Enlightenment contemporary with the novel's genesis), a lived interrogation, not a pre-formed political document; radical thinking requires radical formal experiment, creating generic and ideological disruption simultaneously and putting the so-called realist novel and its values under pressure; the poetics of social and phenomenological space reveals an analysis of the dispossessed subject, not the bildung of success or overcoming; the presence of the aesthetic and art works in the novel is a constant source of social questioning. Among texts discussed, six novels of illegitimacy, from Jane Austen to Scott to George Eliot and George Moore, stand out because illegitimacy, with its challenge to social norms, is a test case for the novelist, and a growing point of the democratic imagination.
Book Synopsis The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories by : Emma Liggins
Download or read book The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories written by Emma Liggins and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Victorian and modernist haunted houses in female-authored ghost stories as representations of the architectural uncanny. It reconsiders the gendering of the supernatural in terms of unease, denial, disorientation, confinement and claustrophobia within domestic space. Drawing on spatial theory by Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre and Elizabeth Grosz, it analyses the reoccupation and appropriation of space by ghosts, women and servants as a means of addressing the opposition between the past and modernity. The chapters consider a range of haunted spaces, including ancestral mansions, ghostly gardens, suburban villas, Italian churches and houses subject to demolition and ruin. The ghost stories are read in the light of women’s non-fictional writing on architecture, travel, interior design, sacred space, technology, the ideal home and the servant problem. Women writers discussed include Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Vernon Lee, Edith Wharton, May Sinclair and Elizabeth Bowen. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the ghost story, Female Gothic and Victorian and modernist women’s writing, as well as general readers with an interest in the supernatural.
Book Synopsis Literary Illumination by : Richard Leahy
Download or read book Literary Illumination written by Richard Leahy and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Illumination examines the relationship between literature and artificial illumination, demonstrating that developments of lighting technology during the nineteenth century definitively altered the treatment of light as symbol, metaphor and textual motif. Correspondingly, the book also engages with the changing nature of darkness, and how the influence of artificial light altered both public perceptions of, and behaviour within, darkness, as well as examining literary chiaroscuros. Within each of four main chapters dedicated to the analysis of a single dominant light source in the long nineteenth-century – firelight, candlelight, gaslight, and electric light – the author considers the phenomenological properties of the light sources, and where their presence would be felt most strongly in the nineteenth century, before collating a corpus of texts for each light source and environment.
Book Synopsis Making Social Knowledge in the Victorian City by : Martin Hewitt
Download or read book Making Social Knowledge in the Victorian City written by Martin Hewitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the ‘ecology of knowledge’ of urban Britain in the Victorian period and seeks to examine the way in which Victorians comprehended the nature of their urban society, through an exploration of the history of Victorian Manchester, and two specific case studies on the fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell and the campaigns for educational extension which emerged out of the city. It argues that crucial to the Victorians’ approaches was the ‘visiting mode’ as a particular discursive formation, including its institutional foundations, its characteristic modes and assumptions, and the texts which exemplify it. Recognition of the importance of the visiting mode, it is argued, offers a fundamental challenge to established Foucauldian interpretations of nineteenthcentury society and culture and provides an important corrective to recent scholarship of nineteenth-century technologies of knowing.
Book Synopsis For Better, For Worse by : Carolyn Lambert
Download or read book For Better, For Worse written by Carolyn Lambert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume explores the fictional portrayal of marriage by women novelists between 1800 and 1900. It investigates the ways in which these novelists used the cultural form of the novel to engage with and contribute to the wider debates of the period around the fundamental cultural and social building block of marriage. The collection provides an important contribution to the emerging scholarly interest in nineteenth-century marriage, gender studies, and domesticity, opening up new possibilities for uncovering submerged, marginalized, and alternative stories in Victorian literature. An initial chapter outlines the public discourses around marriage in the nineteenth century, the legal reforms that were achieved as a result of public pressure, and the ways in which these laws and economic concerns impacted on the marital relationship. It beds the collection down in current critical thinking and draws on life writing, journalism, and conduct books to widen our understanding of how women responded to the ideological and cultural construct of marriage. Further chapters examine a range of texts by lesser-known writers as well as canonical authors structured around a timeline of the major legal reforms that impacted on marriage. This structure provides a clear framework for the collection, locating it firmly within contemporary debate and foregrounding female voices. An afterword reflects back on the topic of marriage in the nineteenth- century and considers how the activism of the period influenced and shaped reform post-1900. This volume will make an important contribution to scholarship on Victorian Literature, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, and the Nineteenth Century.
Book Synopsis The Complete Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell by : Elizabeth Gaskell
Download or read book The Complete Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 3260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This collection includes 10 classics by this notable Victorian author, whose novels shown brutal and detailed portraits of lives of the poor, the orphans and the working class people in mid Victorian England. "Mary Barton" is set in the English city of Manchester and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class. "The Moorland Cottage" – Maggie Browne is asked to give up her future and sacrifice herself for the good of her brother. "Cranford" – Marry Smith sympathetically portraying transformation of a small town customs and values. "Ruth" – A young orphan girl gets a job at a ball to repair torn dresses. There she meets a handsome aristocrat and falls in love, but she ends up abandoned and pregnant. "North and South" – Margaret Hale's family settles in Milton where she witnesses the brutal world wrought by the Industrial Revolution. "Sylvia's Lovers" is a sad story of love and betrayal set in the time of Napoleonic Wars. 'Wives and Daughters" – An attractive Molly Gibson gets send away from home as she arouses interest of her father's associates. But when she falls in love, her loved one chooses her step sister. "A Dark Night's Work" is a story of a country lawyer, Edward Wilkins, who tries to live a rich life like his clients, but ends up in debt, and eventually commits a crime. "My Lady Ludlow" recounts the daily lives of the widowed Countess of Ludlow of Hanbury and the spinster Miss Galindo, and their caring for other single women and girls. "Cousin Phillis" – A 19-year-old Paul Manning moves to the country and befriends his mother's family and his cousin Phillis, who is confused by her own placement at the edge of adolescence. "Mrs. Gaskell and Knutsford" is a biography of Elizabeth Gaskell.
Book Synopsis ELIZABETH GASKELL Premium Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories; Including Poems, Essays & Biographies (Illustrated) by : Elizabeth Gaskell
Download or read book ELIZABETH GASKELL Premium Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories; Including Poems, Essays & Biographies (Illustrated) written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 4957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This collection contains the complete works of the great Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and a biography of Charlotte Bronte. Introduction: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Novels: Mary Barton The Moorland Cottage Cranford North and South Sylvia's Lovers Wives and Daughters A Dark Night's Work Short Stories & Novellas: Round the Sofa My Lady Ludlow An Accursed Race The Doom of the Griffiths Half a Life-Time Ago The Poor Clare The Half-Brothers Cousin Phillis Company Manners Mr. Harrison's Confessions The Sexton's Hero The Grey Woman Curious if True Six Weeks at Heppenheim Libbie Marsh's Three Eras Christmas Storms and Sunshine Hand and Heart Bessy's Troubles at Home Disappearances Lizzie Leigh The Well of Pen-Mortha The Heart of John Middleton Traits and Stories of the Huguenots Morton Hall My French Master The Squire's Story The Manchester Marriage Lois the Witch The Crooked Branch The Old Nurse's Story Clopton House Crowley Castle Two Fragments of Ghost Stories The Shah's English Gardener The Deserted Mansion A Visit to Eton The Cage at Cranford Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family The Ghost in the Garden Room Poetry: Sketches Among the Poor Bran The Scholar's Story Other Works: The Life of Charlotte Brontë Cumberland Sheep-Shearers Traits and Stories of The Hugenots Modern Greek Songs An Italian Institution A Fear for the Future Biography: Mrs. Gaskell and Knutsford by George A. Payne Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters.
Book Synopsis Domestic Modernism, the Interwar Novel, and E.H. Young by : Chiara Briganti
Download or read book Domestic Modernism, the Interwar Novel, and E.H. Young written by Chiara Briganti and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an analytical model for reading a large body of modernist works by women. The authors document the publication and reception history of E. H. Young's novels, make a significant contribution to the field of 'homeculture,' and show that the fictional embodiment of home in Young, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Lettice Cooper, E. M. Delafield, Stella Gibbons, Storm Jameson, and E. Arnot Robertson epitomizes the symbiosis between architecture and literature, or between the house and the novel.
Book Synopsis ELIZABETH GASKELL Ultimate Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poetry, Essays & Biographies) by : Elizabeth Gaskell
Download or read book ELIZABETH GASKELL Ultimate Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poetry, Essays & Biographies) written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2024-01-12 with total page 4642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection contains the complete works of the great Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and a biography of Charlotte Bronte. Introduction: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Novels: Mary Barton The Moorland Cottage Cranford Ruth North and South Sylvia's Lovers Wives and Daughters A Dark Night's Work Short Stories & Novellas: Round the Sofa My Lady Ludlow An Accursed Race The Doom of the Griffiths Half a Life-Time Ago The Poor Clare The Half-Brothers Cousin Phillis Company Manners Mr. Harrison's Confessions The Sexton's Hero The Grey Woman Curious if True Six Weeks at Heppenheim Libbie Marsh's Three Eras Christmas Storms and Sunshine Hand and Heart Bessy's Troubles at Home Disappearances Lizzie Leigh The Well of Pen-Mortha The Heart of John Middleton Traits and Stories of the Huguenots Morton Hall My French Master The Squire's Story Right at Last The Manchester Marriage Lois the Witch The Crooked Branch The Old Nurse's Story Clopton House Crowley Castle Two Fragments of Ghost Stories The Shah's English Gardener Martha Preston The Deserted Mansion Uncle Peter A Visit to Eton The Cage at Cranford Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family The Ghost in the Garden Room Poetry: Sketches Among the Poor Bran The Scholar's Story Other Works: The Life of Charlotte Brontë The Last Generation in England Cumberland Sheep-Shearers Traits and Stories of The Hugenots Modern Greek Songs French Life An Italian Institution Shams A Fear for the Future Biography: Mrs. Gaskell and Knutsford by George A. Payne Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters.
Book Synopsis Elizabeth Gaskell Premium Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories by : Elizabeth Gaskell
Download or read book Elizabeth Gaskell Premium Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 4642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This collection contains the complete works of the great Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and a biography of Charlotte Bronte. Introduction: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Novels: Mary Barton The Moorland Cottage Cranford North and South Sylvia's Lovers Wives and Daughters A Dark Night's Work Short Stories & Novellas: Round the Sofa My Lady Ludlow An Accursed Race The Doom of the Griffiths Half a Life-Time Ago The Poor Clare The Half-Brothers Cousin Phillis Company Manners Mr. Harrison's Confessions The Sexton's Hero The Grey Woman Curious if True Six Weeks at Heppenheim Libbie Marsh's Three Eras Christmas Storms and Sunshine Hand and Heart Bessy's Troubles at Home Disappearances Lizzie Leigh The Well of Pen-Mortha The Heart of John Middleton Traits and Stories of the Huguenots Morton Hall My French Master The Squire's Story The Manchester Marriage Lois the Witch The Crooked Branch The Old Nurse's Story Clopton House Crowley Castle Two Fragments of Ghost Stories The Shah's English Gardener The Deserted Mansion A Visit to Eton The Cage at Cranford Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family The Ghost in the Garden Room Poetry: Sketches Among the Poor Bran The Scholar's Story Other Works: The Life of Charlotte Brontë Cumberland Sheep-Shearers Traits and Stories of The Hugenots Modern Greek Songs An Italian Institution A Fear for the Future Biography: Mrs. Gaskell and Knutsford by George A. Payne Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters.
Book Synopsis The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell by : Elizabeth Gaskell
Download or read book The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-12-25 with total page 1338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eBook edition of "The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Gaskell" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Content: Introduction: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Short Stories & Novellas: Round the Sofa My Lady Ludlow An Accursed Race The Doom of the Griffiths Half a Life-Time Ago The Poor Clare The Half-Brothers Cousin Phillis Company Manners Mr. Harrison's Confessions The Sexton's Hero The Grey Woman Curious if True Six Weeks at Heppenheim Libbie Marsh's Three Eras Christmas Storms and Sunshine Hand and Heart Bessy's Troubles at Home Disappearances Lizzie Leigh The Well of Pen-Mortha The Heart of John Middleton Traits and Stories of the Huguenots Morton Hall My French Master The Squire's Story Right at Last The Manchester Marriage Lois the Witch The Crooked Branch The Old Nurse's Story Clopton House Crowley Castle Two Fragments of Ghost Stories The Shah's English Gardener Martha Preston The Deserted Mansion Uncle Peter A Visit to Eton The Cage at Cranford Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family The Ghost in the Garden Room Biography: Mrs. Gaskell and Knutsford by George A. Payne Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters.
Book Synopsis Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life by : Elisabeth-Cleghorn Gaskell
Download or read book Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life written by Elisabeth-Cleghorn Gaskell and published by . This book was released on 1849 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis North and South by : Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Download or read book North and South written by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North and South is a social novel by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television twice (1975 and 2004). The later version renewed interest in the novel and attracted a wider readership. Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton (1848), focused on relations between employers and workers in Manchester from the perspective of the working poor; North and South uses a protagonist from southern England to present and comment on the perspectives of mill owners and workers in an industrialising city.[1] The novel is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England. Forced to leave her home in the tranquil, rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton. She witnesses the brutal world wrought by the Industrial Revolution, seeing employers and workers clashing in the first strikes. Sympathetic to the poor (whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends), she clashes with John Thornton: a nouveau riche cotton-mill owner who is contemptuous of his workers. The novel traces her growing understanding of the complexity of labour relations and their impact on well-meaning mill owners and her conflicted relationship with John Thornton. Gaskell based her depiction of Milton on Manchester, where she lived as the wife of a Unitarian minister. Plot: Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale happily returns home from London to the idyllic southern village of Helstone after her cousin Edith marries Captain Lennox. She lived for almost 10 years in the city with Edith and wealthy Aunt Shaw to learn to be a young lady. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother, Henry, am up-and-comng barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter. At the suggestion of Mr. Bell, his old friend from Oxford, he settles with his wife and daughter in Milton-Northern (where Mr. Bell was born and owns property). The industrial town in Darkshire (a textile-producing region) manufactures cotton and is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution; masters and workers are clashing in the first organised strikes.[11] Margaret finds the bustling, smoky town of Milton harsh and strange, and she is upset by its poverty. Mr. Hale (in reduced financial circumstances) works as a tutor; one of his pupils is wealthy and influential manufacturer John Thornton, master of Marlborough Mills. From the outset, Margaret and Thornton are at odds with each other; she sees him as coarse and unfeeling, and he sees her as haughty. He is attracted to her beauty and self-assurance, and she begins to admire how he has risen from poverty. During the 18 months she spends in Milton Margaret gradually learns to appreciate the city and its hard-working people, especially Nicholas Higgins (a union representative) and his daughter Bessy, whom she befriends. Bessy is ill with byssinosis from inhaling cotton dust, which eventually kills her. Margaret's mother is becoming sicker, and a workers' strike is brewing..... Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, (nee Stevenson; 29 September 1810 - 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte, published in 1857, was the first biography of Bronte. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851-53), North and South (1854-55), and Wives and Daughters (1865)........
