Industrialization

Elizabeth Gaskell has come recommended by a few of my friends who also enjoy reading Victorian literature. She's an interesting author; a contemporary of Charles Dickens. Her content seems related to that of Jane Austen, but approaches it from a slightly different angle, showing the lower class melting into the upper class in her story North and South as well as the industrial age and the plight of the cotton mill workers.
Although I found it slow to get into due to my association with book "colors" and moods (it's a VERY hot and humid summer compared to the dreary and cold Northern England I was reading about), I did enjoy it and I want to read more of her works. Her language felt more modern than that of Jane Austen as well as being more accessible than Charles Dickens. I also found it interesting that she wrote for Charles Dickens' journal and it seems there was a little competition, shall we say, for writing about the plight of the laborers.