Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South, published in 1855 after serialisation in Dickens' Household Words magazine. It is the story of Margaret Hale, who was raised in the South in the New Forest and London's Harley Street, and then moves North to a smokey mill town, Milton, in Darkshire. As well as Margaret's emotional life and her growing sense of independence, the novel explores the new ways of living thrown up by industrialisation, and the relationships between 'masters and men'. Many of Margaret Hale's experiences echo Gaskell's own life, as she was born in Chelsea and later moved to Manchester, and the novel has become valued for its insights into social conflicts and the changing world in which Gaskell lived.
With
Sally Shuttleworth Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Dinah Birch Pro-vice Chancellor for Research and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool
And
Jenny Uglow Biographer of Elizabeth Gaskell
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:02.0 | Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
| 0:05.0 | There's a reading list to go with it on our website. |
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| 0:12.0 | I hope you enjoyed the programs. |
| 0:14.0 | Hello, in 1854 Charles Dickens published a serialised novel North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. |
| 0:21.0 | It tells the story of Margaret Hale, forced to leave her rural childhood home in the south of England |
| 0:26.0 | and live among the polluted cotton mills and Milton to the north of Virginer Manchester. |
| 0:30.0 | With countless workers in unspeakable slums, court have been strikes and riots. |
| 0:34.0 | She overcomes her prejudice and learns to prefer her new life to her old. |
| 0:38.0 | Gaskell lived in Manchester and knew her subject well. |
| 0:41.0 | More than any other writer of her time, her novels brought the reality of industrial life to a southern reading public |
| 0:47.0 | and she's now seen as one of the great writers of her century. |
| 0:50.0 | With me to discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and Sally Shuttleworth, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. |
| 0:57.0 | Diana Birch provides chance for research and professor at English Literature at the University of Liverpool |
| 1:02.0 | and Jenny Eugler, Biographer at Elizabeth Gaskell. |
| 1:05.0 | Diana Birch, what do we need to know about Gaskell's early life? |
| 1:09.0 | She was born in reasonably affluent circumstances, not into poverty, into a unitarian family. |
| 1:16.0 | That is something we need to know. |
| 1:18.0 | She suffered a misfortune when she was a baby, in that her mother died. |
| 1:23.0 | Her father sent her to live with a loving aunt, Hannah Lum, in Nutsfield. |
| 1:30.0 | So though she had been born in London, she was brought up in the northwest. |
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