two different stories as well as in Sylvia's Lovers. It was during this visit that Mrs Gaskell collected the information which served as the basis of her story. In her novel Whitby is called "Monkshaven".

A powerfully moving novel of a young woman caught between the attractions of two very different men, Sylvia’s Lovers is set in the 1790s in an English seaside town. England is at war with France, and press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men for service. One of their victims is a whaling harpooner named Charley Kinraid, whose charm and vivacity have captured the heart of Sylvia Robson. But Sylvia’s devoted cousin, Philip Hepburn, hopes to marry her himself and, in order to win her, deliberately withholds crucial information—with devastating consequences (from goodreads)

The sea andseafaring folk always had a peculiar attraction for Mrs Gaskell, which she explained saying: "The blood of the Vikings still lingers in my veins".

The coast north of Whitby was very familiar to Mrs Gaskell thirty years before she visited this old-fashioned fishing town, when she made long visits to Newcastle, a town which had a seafaring relation with Whitby.

It is a debatable question whether Mrs Gaskell - having read of the terrible press-gang days at Whitby, which resulted in the riot of 1793 - went there with the intention of verifying the facts and locating the events, or whether, having gone there for a holiday, she heard of the press-gang riots and then gathered her materials and planned her story. Many think the latter was the case, for