North and South Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - A novel of love and social strife in northern England during the industrial revolutiona masterpiece of Victorian literature.After a decade spent living with her aunt in London, nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale returns home to her beloved village of Helstone only to discover that her pastor father has had a crisis of faith and is moving the family to the North of England. In the industrial town of Milton, Margaret is horrified by the dirty air, the shocking poverty, and the pervasive mistreatment of the working class. John Thornton, a student of Margarets father and the self-made owner of a local textile mill, finds Margaret haughty and naive, but is drawn to her beauty nevertheless. As tensions between workers and masters mount, a strike appears inevitable. Margarets sympathies lie with the downtrodden laborers of Milton, but her heart increasingly yearns for Thornton, whose strength and depth of character will be revealed in a time of profound crisis.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (29 September 1810 12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature.