Book description
"The rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if
they don't know, they ought to know. We're their slaves as long as
we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows,
and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds"
Mary Barton, the heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, is beautiful
but has been born poor. Her father fights for the rights of his fellow
workers, but Mary wants to make a better life for them both. She
rashly decides to reject her lover Jem, a struggling engineer, in the
hope of marrying the rich mill-owner's son Henry Carson and securing a
safe future. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes
the main suspect, Mary finds herself hopelessly torn between them. She
also discovers an unpleasant truth - one that could bring tragedy upon
everyone, and threatens to destroy her.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) moved from the London of her childhood
to Knutsford and later Manchester, and her experience of the
differences between North and South deeply informed her writing.
Writer of six novels, numerous shorter works and the biography of her
great friend Charlotte Bront , Gaskell was at first published
anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised
in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household
Words. Mary Barton was Gaskell's first novel, and deals
with many of the great social and political themes that came to be so
distinctive of her work.
Gaskell's other novels Cranford, North and South
and Wives and Daughters are also published in the Penguin
English Library.
