Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-nineteenth century. But these clashes are dramatized through personal struggles. John Barton has to reconcile his personal conscience with his socialist duty, risking his life and liberty in the process. His daughter Mary is caught between two lovers, from opposing classes - worker and manufacturer. And at the heart of the narrative lies a murder ...
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Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel depicts nothing less than the great clashes between capital and labour, which arose from rapid industrialisation and problems of trade in the mid-nineteenth century. But these clashes are dramatized through personal struggles. John Barton has to reconcile his personal conscience with his socialist duty, risking his life and liberty in the process. His daughter Mary is caught between two lovers, from opposing classes - worker and manufacturer. And at the heart of the narrative lies a murder which implicates them all. Mary Barton was published in 1848, at a time of great social ferment in Europe, and it reflects its revolutionary moment through an English lens. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her first novel about the world in which she lived - Manchester at the height of the industrial revolution. As the wife of a Unitarian minister she was solidly middle-class; but she also had close contact with the working classes around her, sympathised with them, and represented their extreme distresses in her fiction. She is radical in taking on their dialect, imagining the realities of their lives, and placing a working woman at the centre of her fiction. If to our eyes her vision remains limited, it was an honest vision, for which she was much criticised in her own time, by her own class.
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Add this copy of Mary Barton (Penguin Classics) to cart. $1.57, fair condition, Sold by Valleys Books & More rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Roanoke, VA, UNITED STATES, published 1997 by Penguin Group.
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Add this copy of Mary Barton (Wordsworth Classics) to cart. $1.76, very good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 2012 by Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
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Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Oxford University Press, USA.
Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA.
Add this copy of Mary Barton (Classic Illustrated Edition) to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published by Independently published.
Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA.
Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA.
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Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Oxford University Press, USA.
Add this copy of Mary Barton to cart. $1.99, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1998 by Oxford University Press, USA.
If you like period pieces about England, you will love this author. She writes much like Bronte, Dickens etc. and was one if not the first to be published in England in the early 18 hundreds quite an accomlishment for a woman in those days.
a1b2c3
Jan 28, 2010
Mary Barton
This is an old-fashioned book written about the appalling conditions workers in the Lancashire cotton mills faced. There were no unions to protect the working men and women; being laid off meant scrounging for everything and living in sub-standard dwellings. I enjoyed the style of the book and learned a lot about the history of the cotton mills as well.