North and South is the second industrial novel — sometimes categorised as a social novel — and the fourth overall by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s best known novels and a television adaptation North & South, broadcast at the end of 2004, renewed interest and gained it a wider audience. Her first industrial novel Mary Barton (1848), already dealt with relations between employers and workers, but its narrative adopted the view of the working poor and described the "misery and hateful passions caused by the love of pursuing wealth as well as the egoism, thoughtlessness and insensitivity of manufacturers." In North and South Elizabeth Gaskell returns to the precarious situation of workers and their relations with industrialists, but in a more balanced manner by focusing more on the thinking and perspective of the employers.