Mary Barton was praised by contemporary critics for its vivid realism, its convincing characters and its deep sympathy with the poor, and it still has the power to engage and move readers today. This edition reproduces the last edition of the novel supervised by Elizabeth Gaskell and includes her husband's two lectures on the Lancashire dialect.

'she tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.' North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of .

Milton is a northern town centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll, Margaret Hale is initially shocked by the social unrest and poverty she finds in her new hometown. However, as her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light.

Ruth Hilton, an orphan and dressmaker's assistant, is seduced and then heartlessly deserted by the wealthy Henry Bellingham. A dissenting minister advises her to pass as a widow and be employed as a governess with the tyrannical Mr Bradshaw. However, the deceit brings grievous consequences.

Margaret's safe existence is turned upside down when she has to move to the grim northern town of Milton. Not only does she have her eyes opened by the poverty and hardship she encounters there, but she is thrown into confusion by stern factory owner John Thornton - whose treatment of his workers brings them into fierce opposition.

The railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes yet further agitation not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies.

Gaskell's best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty.

When her father leaves the Church, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of the surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, she becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a sense of social justice.

Provides a portrait of an early Victorian country village and its genteel inhabitants, mostly women, whose social attitudes remain firmly unchanging against the modernising world, and whose domestic details dominate conversation. This novel describes the uneventful lives of Cranford's inhabitants.

Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men.

Molly Gibson is brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries a new stepsister, Cynthia, enters Molly's quiet life. Loveable but worldly and troubling, Cynthia's arrival alters Molly's daily life.

Mary Barton is beautiful but has been born poor. Her father fights for the rights of his fellow workers, but Mary wants to make a better life for them both. She rashly decides to reject her lover Jem, a struggling engineer, in the hope of marrying the rich mill-owner's son Henry Carson and securing a safe future.

One of the less familiar of Mrs. Gaskell's novels, Ruth was in its own time a cause celebre which not only contributed substantially to its author's growing reputation but also won the approval of a number of her distinguished contemporaries. The text used for this edition is based upon that of the first edition published in 1853.

Intended for the holiday season, this title offers tales of romance, theft, justice and heart-warming family reunions.

This Norton Critical Edition is annotated and edited by the preeminent Gaskell scholar, Alan Shelston.

Contains tales of the supernatural and the macabre written by the author who is known today for her pioneering social novels such as Mary Barton (1848).

Set against a backdrop of the Salem witch-hunts, 'Lois the Witch' is a troubled and sombre novella revealing much about the complicity of mankind.

Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets.

Stumbling upon some luggage that has been left behind in the hotel he works in, a waiter searches through it to try to identify its owner. He does find quite a number of stories. Impressed by their quality, he succeeds in getting them published, although the identity of their author remains a mystery until a visitor comes calling.

A biography of Charlotte Bronte that describes her life of claustrophobic confinement in a Yorkshire parsonage belied by the heights of imagination to which she was able to soar in her writing. It also describes the 'extraordinary genius' that seemed to have touched her family and the intense suffering that also visited them.