Although the Industrial Revolution contributed to more employment opportunities and an overall improvement in standards of living, the working class-which included women and children-often contended with poor working conditions, long hours, and low wages. Whereas landed aristocracy had dominated England’s social structure for centuries, wealthy industrialists, like Gaskell’s John Thornton, increasingly rose to prominence. Many of these innovations occurred in Great Britain, whose commercial success-especially in the booming Manchester, nicknamed “Cottonopolis”-was at its zenith around the time Gaskell wrote. North and South is set near the end of the Industrial Revolution, a transition to new manufacturing methods-including the use of machines, steam power, and the factory system-which began in the late eighteenth century and continued through the mid-nineteenth century. Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in 1865 and was buried at Knutsford. She also authored a well-known biography of her friend, Charlotte Brontë. Her most acclaimed novels include Cranford and the unfinished Wives and Daughters.

It also drew the admiration of Charles Dickens, who invited her to submit stories to his periodicals, Household Words and All the Year Round. Her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), drew attention to the plight of Manchester’s working poor. She turned to writing as a distraction from her grief. Elizabeth had four daughters, though her only son died of scarlet fever at nine months of age. They settled in the rapidly growing industrial city of Manchester, where Elizabeth engaged in relief work among the poor and taught Sunday school. Her mother died a little more than a year after Elizabeth’s birth, so the infant Elizabeth was sent to the country town of Knutsford, Cheshire, to be raised by her aunt, Hannah Lumb, whom she later described as “more than mother.” Elizabeth married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, in 1832. Her parents had eight children, but Elizabeth, the last born, was one of only two who survived. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born to William Stevenson, a civil servant and writer, and Elizabeth Holland Stevenson.

North south elizabeth gaskell