Cranford was quite different from North and South smaller in scope and much more humorous (though not necessarily light Gaskell had a penchant for examining social issues in all of her books, and she didn’t shy away from depicting tragedy). It was only because I’d seen and loved North and South that I DVRed Cranford when it appeared on Masterpiece Theater. It’s really a great miniseries and I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. At heart the tale of love between a gruff self-made man and a gentlewoman in somewhat reduced circumstances, set in England at the dawn of the industrial age, North and South was both devastatingly romantic and meaty, examining issues of class and gender in Victorian society. Gaskell was a friend and contemporary to Charlotte Bronte (she wrote a biography of Bronte after her death), as well as being a fairly prolific novelist in her own right.įinally, after hearing about the virtues of North and South many times, I ordered the DVD from Netflix. This was not the rather campy American Civil War miniseries starring Kirstie Alley and Patrick Swayze, but rather a British production, based on the novel of the same name by an author I’d never heard of, Elizabeth Gaskell. Years ago, on romance message boards, I repeatedly read about the greatness of a certain historical romance miniseries called North and South. My route to reading this slim 19th-century novel was somewhat circuitous. Jennie B+ Reviews / Book Reviews 19th century / slice of life 30 Comments
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