Mary Barton
a tale of Manchester life
by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
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"Mary Barton first appeared in 1848, and has since become one of the best known novels on the 'condition of England', part of a nineteenth-century British trend to understand the enormous cultural, economic and social changes wrought by industrialization. Gaskell's work had great importance to the labour and reform movements, and it influenced writers such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Charlotte Bronte. The plot of Mary Barton concerns the poverty and desperation of England's industrial workers. Fundamentally, however, it revolves around Mary's personal conflicts. She is already divided between an affection for an industrialist's son, Henry Carson, and for a man of her own class, Jem Wilson. But Mary's conflict escalates when her father, a committed trade unionist, is asked to assassinate Henry, who is the son of his unjust employer."--BOOK JACKET.
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Subjects
Fiction, Trials (Murder), Fathers and daughters, Triangles (Interpersonal relations), Poor families, Labor unions, Working class women, Textile industry, Working class families, Social life and customs, Working class, Women, open_syllabus_project, Fathers and daughters, fiction, England, fiction, Fiction, political, Fiction, romance, general, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, historical, English fiction, Manners and customs, Philosophy, modern, Fiction, historical, general, Mary Barton (Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn), Gaskell, elizabeth cleghorn , 1810-1865, Working class families--fiction, Triangles (interpersonal relations)--fiction, Fathers and daughters--fiction, Trials (murder)--fiction, Pr4710 .m3 2008, 823/.8Places
Manchester (England), England, ManchesterTimes
19th centuryShowing 10 featured editions. View all 70 editions?
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Mary Barton (Penguin Popular Classics)
October 1998, Penguin Books
in Spanish
0140621024 9780140621020
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Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (English Library)
April 30, 1975, Penguin Classics
in English
0140430539 9780140430530
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 588-590).
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Work Description
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary's dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist John Barton, Mary Barton (1848) powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the 'hungry forties' as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskell's great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.
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