Industrial Revolution Fiction

In the 1960s and early '70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.

Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....

Fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger", a young prostitute who rents a beautiful blue dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. To make sure she earns her fees and to keep her from running off with his fantastical gown, her pimp has set a malevolent old woman, known only as "the Eye", to follow her through the back alleys of Sunderland.

In this sweet regency romance, two star-crossed lovers must contend with families on either side of the violent clash between progress and tradition. Henry Stockton, heir to the Stockton fortune, returns home from three years at war seeking refuge from his haunting memories. Determined to bury the past, he embraces his grandfather’s plans to modernize the family’s wool mill, ignoring the grumblings from local weavers. When tragedy strikes shortly after his arrival, Henry will have to sort truth from suspicion if he is to protect his family’s livelihood and legacy.

While Joe and his relatives continue their laborious work at Darby ironworks in Coalbrookdale, his brother Richard, through his marriage to a Bridgnorth Corn Merchant's daughter, ascends the social ladder. The novel unfolds, weaving in moral and ethical complexities as it portrays the realities of 18th-century England's justice system. Through the Banghams' interactions with the law, the narrative sheds light on the grim aspects of prisoner transportation to America and the struggles of its enslaved populace, introducing the emerging anti-slavery sentiment.

When mill heiress Miss Emily Marsham agrees to a marriage born out of tragedy and hardheaded necessity, her hopes for future marital bliss aren’t high. Adam Blackthorn, the ambitious manager of one of her father’s mills, is not what she expected in a husband. Can she make the best of her situation and be a dutiful wife, or will Adam challenge her to become something else entirely?

Struggling to support her family after her husband’s death, Caroline Harding attracts the attention of the ruthless Captain Francis Grafton who offers her a devil’s bargain to pay back her debts to him. Outwitting her enigmatic employer and unwillingly gaining his approval significantly changes her life for the better, but can she win his loyalty and his heart when he appears to care for nothing but profit?

This short novel follows the fate of Sissy Jupe, a warm-hearted circus child, and the family that adopts her. Deserted by her ailing father, Sissy is taken into the cold household of the Gradgrind family, which operates a school. The "eminently practical" Thomas Gradgrind believes only in facts and figures and has raised his children accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative side of their nature, and the consequences are devastating.