Mary Barton

Penguin Classics relaunchMary 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.

“"The revolution urged by Mary Barton is a revolution in the emotional and mental dispositions of individuals towards each other … a thoroughly idealist enterprise." —Macdonald Daly”

"The revolution urged by Mary Barton is a revolution in the emotional and mental dispositions of individuals towards each other … a thoroughly idealist enterprise."
—Macdonald Daly

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England. In 1832 she married the Rev. William Gaskell. Published in Dickens' Household Works and a lifelong friend of Charlotte Bronte, Gaskell's finest novel is North and South, also published by Penguin.Macdonald Daly is Lecturer in Modern Literature at Nottingham University. He has also edited DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and Kangaroo for Penguin Classics.

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