North and South. Cranford

This book includes two of the most famous novels by the Victorian-era English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865). The novel "Cranford," translated from issues 7-9 of the journal "Otechestvennye Zapiski" in 1855, describes the life of a fictional English town. The novel North and South, translated from issues 5-6 of The Russian Herald in 1856, contrasts the dynamic life in the north of England with its measured flow in the south. The edition is decorated with drawings by George du Maurier (1834-1896) and Hugh Thomson (1860-1920). Along with Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Charlotte Brontë, Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell belongs to a brilliant line of English novelists. She married in 1832 and moved to Manchester, spending the rest of her life there. This industrial city, according to the writer herself, she imagined her "fiery, terrible, smoky, vile Babylon". The first major work of Gaskell - the novel "Mary Barton" - was devoted to the realities of harsh Manchester life. In its problematics, this novel was reminiscent of Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". In the novel "North and South" Gaskell contrasts the dynamic industrial activity in the north of England measured flow of life in the south of the country. The writer was attracted by the idyllic pictures of the "good old England", which she saw in the days of her childhood. Gaskell with love and a fair share of humor reproduces these pictures in his novel "Cranford". This is the name of her fictional small old-school town, which reigns patriarchal mores and inhabited by very determined women. In "Cranford" reflected the writer's nostalgia for the melted in the mists of time distant country of her childhood and youth. This novel in its style and soft, friendly humor resembles the prose of Dickens. The writer's friend Charlotte Brontë noted that "Cranford" is a lively, expressive, energetic, wise and at the same time kind and indulgent work. The edition is adorned with drawings by two British artists, George du Maurier and Hugh Thomson. Du Maurier was born in Paris in 1834, but his parents soon left France and settled in England. George first studied chemistry at University College London, but then gave himself entirely to drawing. He soon became a famous cartoonist, who has long collaborated with the British satirical magazine "Punch". Du Maurier was also engaged in illustrating books. Due to vision problems he had to give up drawing, and in the second half of his life Du Maurier wrote several novels in the "Gothic style". Hugh Thomson was born in 1860 in Northern Ireland. He did not receive a systematic artistic education, but this did not prevent him in his lifetime to gain fame as a classic of book illustration. Thomson managed to illustrate hundreds of books, among which were novels by Dickens, Thackeray, Austen, Shakespeare's plays. The public admired how accurately in his drawings he conveys the details of interiors, landscapes, clothing characters and their characters. All these features are inherent in his drawings for the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell.