North and South is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the North of England. Forced to leave her home in the tranquil rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton where she witnesses the brutal world wrought by the industrial revolution and employers and workers clashing in the first organised strikes.
Sympathetic to the poor whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends, she clashes with John Thornton, a cotton mill manufacturer who belongs to the new upper-middle class and whose contemptuous attitude to workers Margaret despises.
2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice and this is certainly a reason to celebrate one of the world's most beloved books and one of the greatest novelists in the English language.
First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has consistently been Jane Austen's most popular novel. It portrays life in the genteel rural society of the day, and tells of the initial misunderstandings and later mutual enlightenment between Elizabeth Bennet and the haughty Darcy.
2012 marked Charles Dickens's 200 birthday. Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature.
It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.