Mary Barton n/e (Oxford World's Classics)

Gaskell, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0199538352 ISBN 13: 9780199538355

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

'It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it.'

Set in Manchester in the 1840s - a period of industrial unrest and extreme deprivation -Mary Bartondepicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself: a factory-worker's daughter who attracts the attentions of the mill-owner's son, she becomes caught up in the violence of class conflict when a brutal murder forces her to confront her true feelings and allegiances.

Mary Barton was praised by contemporary critics for its vivid realism, its convincing characters and its deep sympathy with the poor, and it still has the power to engage and move readers today. This edition reproduces the last edition of the novel supervised by Elizabeth Gaskell and includes her husband's two lectures on the Lancashire dialect.
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About this title

Review:

This is Elizabeth Gaskell at her best, and Shirley Foster's edition is both sagacious and formally accurate. The appendices are invaluable and the explanatory notes are relevant without being obtrusive. A must for readers of Mary Barton. (Dr. Antonio Ballesteros-González, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha)

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199538352
• ISBN 13: 9780199538355
• Binding: Pocket Book
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Foster Shirley