With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Patsy Stoneman, University of Hull. Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell's skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes.

This landmark book - entirely unobtainable for several years - is the single essential study of how the best-known Bronte novels - Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - achieved their world-wide fame. It offers a fascinating account of how the novels have passed into the general culture through a wide variety of media - on the stage, in film and television, in books, illustrations, comic books and paintings, operas, ballets and musical versions, parodies and allusions, as well as later 're-workings' of the original plots. No other book provides such a thorough record of the processes by which the novels have been transmitted and transformed. Now regarded as a seminal work in the field of adaptation studies, this exhaustive study offers analysis of the various texts in terms of their historical and generic construction, aiming to relate the form of each derivative to its ideological function. Its methodology is eclectic, mixing traditional literary criticism with feminist, psychoanalytic and deconstructive techniques to create a work which is both entertaining and scholarly. The book includes a uniquely detailed listing of Bronte derivatives as well as a general bibliography, and is enhanced by black and white illustrations.

This landmark book - entirely unobtainable for several years - is the single essential study of how the best-known Bronte novels - Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - achieved their world-wide fame. It offers a fascinating account of how the novels have passed into the general culture through a wide variety of media - on the stage, in film and television, in books, illustrations, comic books and paintings, operas, ballets and musical versions, parodies and allusions, as well as later 're-workings' of the original plots. No other book provides such a thorough record of the processes by which the novels have been transmitted and transformed. Now regarded as a seminal work in the field of adaptation studies, this exhaustive study offers analysis of the various texts in terms of their historical and generic construction, aiming to relate the form of each derivative to its ideological function. Its methodology is eclectic, mixing traditional literary criticism with feminist, psychoanalytic and deconstructive techniques to create a work which is both entertaining and scholarly. The book includes a uniquely detailed listing of Bronte derivatives as well as a general bibliography, and is enhanced by black and white illustrations.