LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL Born, Chelsea, Died, Alton, Hants, September 29, 1810 November 12, 1865 'North and South' was first published in the year 1855. In the World's Classics' it was first published in 1908, and reprinted in 1923. PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY FREDERICK HALL ENTI INTRODUCTION MRS. GASKELL's North and South has been described by a living man of letters as one of the finest books in modern English fiction'. Yet no story ever came more from the time-spirit, from the merely temporary influences that work upon the writer from without. Labour problems were in the air in that year 1855, and the novelists had already been alert concerning these. Charles Kingsley had published Alton Locke in 1850. Charles Dickens had issued Hard Times in Household Words in 1854. Mrs. Gaskell from her Manchester home had watched phases of the struggle between capital and labour for many a day before she found herself in the mood to present a fair-minded criticism of it to her readers. North and South, with Alton Locke and Hard Times made up a fine trinity of labour' novels to be a helpful influence for the age. It was published in Household Words in 1855,1 and the author discussed the title with her editor, Dickens declaring in favour of North and South rather than for Margaret Hale, which Mrs. Gaskell had offered as an alternative. 6 The title was a happy one, containing as it did the kernel of the book-the attempt at contrast between the placid life of a pastoral southern county of England 1 It appeared in book form at the end of that year. North and South by the Author of Mary Barton, Ruth, Cranford, &c. In two volumes. London: Chapman & Hall. |