Forced to leave her home in the tranquil, rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton. She witnesses the brutal world wrought by the Industrial Revolution, seeing employers and workers clashing in the first strikes. Sympathetic to the poor, whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends, she clashes with John Thornton: a nouveau riche cotton-mill owner who is contemptuous of his workers.

North and South is a social novel set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England. The story uses a protagonist from southern England to present and comment on the perspectives of mill owners and workers in an industrialising city. The novel traces Margaret Hale's growing understanding of the complexity of labour relations and their impact on well-meaning mill owners and her conflicted relationship with John Thornton. North and South remains one of Elizabeth Gaskell's best-known novels and was adapted for television three times.

This case laminate collector's edition includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket.