North and South

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.