Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her classic ‘Condition of England’ novel, North and South, set in Manchester for a readership living through intense industrial and social change. Characters like the Byronic John Thornton and independent Margaret Hale showed her groundbreaking novel grappling with industrial conflict and sexual politics.

So how was it received across the Atlantic? What impact did it have on writers such as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Frances Hodgson Burnett? Can we talk of their novels as ‘adaptations’ of North and South? How did Gaskell provide a blueprint for women authors to address labour relations and the ‘woman question’ in the US context?

Dr Rebecca Styler looks at Elizabeth Gaskell’s transatlantic influence amid the realities of American industrial strife and gender politics, with a glance towards Gaskell’s present-day status in US popular culture.

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