Mary Barton

ÔO Jem, her father wonÕt listen to me, and itÕs you must save Mary! YouÕre like a brother to herÕ
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill ownerÕs 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 MaryÕs 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 Ôhungry fortiesÕ as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth GaskellÕs great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.

In his introduction Maconald Daly discusses Elizabeth GaskellÕs first novel as a pioneering book that made public the great division between rich and poor Ð a theme that inspired much of her finest work.

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