Book Description
Were women writers helped or hindered by an ideology of womanliness that allowed the good mother to be a writer? This new study of Elizabeth Gaskell's major work, including her novels and her biography of Charlotte Bronte, shows her negotiating her way through the difficulties of being a woman artist in the Victorian period. Her gender, class position and religious beliefs all contribute to the development of a complex author who sometimes appears as an optimistic spokeswoman for her society and sometimes offers a bold challenge to its accepted beliefs. ... Read more

Book Description
Elizabeth Gaskell's work and life are being rediscovered against a backdrop of Victorian middle-class women's experience by many feminist scholars. Viewed in this century as conventional and conservative, Gaskell may instead be regarded as a radical for her time, because she challenged widely-held assumptions about the nature of women, their proper sphere, and their participation in the public realm. Examining the theme of work in Gaskell's novels, Colby presents this Victorian novelist as an effective advocate of change as she tried to create space for women within the world of work. ... Read more

Book Description
This chronology sets Elizabeth Gaskell in her historical, social and literary contexts. It focuses on her career as a writer but also underlines her interactive roles as wife, mother, practical and tolerant Christian, radical sympathizer. Graham Handley discusses her early life, her marriage, the beginnings of her writing, the years of achievement, her social, humanitarian concerns, love of travel and its influence, with the balance of domesticity and creativity which is the key to her character. ... Read more

Book Description
A great deal has been written about Elizabeth Gaskell in the last decade. This extensively annotated guide to the literature builds upon Weyant's 1994 work on Gaskell that covered some 350 sources published between 1976-1991. This supplement identifies almost 600 new books, book chapters, journal articles, dissertations, masters theses and honors theses on the life and writings of Gaskell published since 1991. ... Read more

Book Description
In this book Schor places the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell in the context both of Victorian society and Victorian fiction. She argues that Gaskell--long viewed as a private, gentle woman who wrote only from a sense of outrage at Industrial England--was in fact intensely interested in publication and in assuming a public voice. Schor also examines how Gaskell's efforts to write about those denied a voice within Victorian society led her to an awareness of her own silencing, and also the limitations of the culture's prevalent literary forms. Schor focuses first on Gaskell's early writing efforts and the difficulty encountered by a woman novelist trying to find a voice; then, on Gaskell's relation to the literary marketplace, and particularly her problematic relationship with Dickens; and finally, on the structure of Gaskell's final novels and the possibilities offered therein for alternative fictions. ... Read more

Book Description
A revolutionary social and political commentary, North and South solidified Gaskell's place in the company of Victorian England's finest novelists. 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.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A welcome surprise for a Jane Austen fan!
I was told by my sister that I just HAD to see the BBC miniseries "North and South" based on the book by Elizabeth Gaskell.I am here to repeat that advice but also to add that you don't want to stop there!As a big Jane Austen fan, I was surprised and ashamed to find that I had never heard of Elizabeth Gaskell.I really enjoyed her writing--the story behind "North and South" and the characters were excellent.I also learned so much about England during that time that I did not know.

I highly recommend the Norton Critical Edition of "North and South" as well.It provided helpful footnotes throughout the story and interesting letters and analysis following the conclusion of the novel.I also must again recommend the BBC miniseries...it was a fairly true adaptation, and the characters came to life!I really don't think you'll be disappointed either way--book or DVD!

So much more!
I love the Norton Critical Edition because it contains so many secondary sources; from letters to contemporary criticism! That is useful to get a better understanding of this novel and its author. The footnotes are on the page and not somewhere in the back of the book, so it's a very easy to use edition. I'd recommed it for college use. ... Read more