Other novels by Elizabeth Gaskell include Mary Barton, Ruth, Cranford, and the posthumously finished Wives and Daughters. Mary Barton shares the most similarities with North and South, as it is set in Manchester and explores the struggles of the working class.
Other “Condition of England” novels, which examine the problems in Victorian England after the Industrial Revolution, include Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Dombey and Sons, Benjamin Disraeli’s Corningsby and Sybil, and Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley.
Gaskell was close friends with novelist Charlotte Bronte, who, in addition to Shirley, wrote Jane Eyre and Villette. Charlotte Bronte’s sister, Emily, was also a novelist, and wrote ...
