She had a little earlier, in 1848, published her first novel, _Mary Barton_--a vivid but distinctly one-sided picture of factory life in Lancashire.

In the same year with the collected _Cranford_ (1853) appeared _Ruth_, also a "strife-novel" (as the Germans would say) though in a different way: and two years later what is perhaps her most elaborate effort, _North and South_.

A year or two before her death in 1865 _Sylvia's Lovers_ was warmly welcomed by some: and the unfinished _Wives and Daughters_, which was actually interrupted by that death, has been considered her maturest work.

Her famous and much controverted _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ does not belong to us, except in so far as it knits the two novelists together.
From hints dropped already, it may be seen that the present writer does not find Mrs.Gaskell his easiest subject.

There is much in her work which, in Hobbes's phrase, is both "an effect of power and a cause of pleasure": but there appears to some to be in her a pervading want of actual success--of _reussite_--absolute and unquestionable.