This Norton Critical Edition of her best-selling novel is annotated and edited by preeminent Gaskell scholar Alan Shelston. "Contexts" includes contemporary reviews and correspondence related to North and South, along with the full text of Gaskell#xE2;#x80;#x99;s 1850 short story "Lizzie Leigh," which, like North and South, is set in industrial Manchester and deals with strong working women. This topic is further addressed in Bessie Rayner Parkes#xE2;#x80;#x99;s essay on Victorian working women."Criticism" collects eleven assessments of the novel, among them Louis Cazamian#xE2;#x80;#x99;s 1904 study of industrial fiction and Hilary Schor#xE2;#x80;#x99;s recent study of North and South in the context of discourse analysis.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.