THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Mary Barton crosses the class divide when she spurns loyal Jem Wilson for the attentions of Manchester mill-owner's son Henry Carson. The romance offers Mary the hope of an escape from poverty, but her father John, a radical Trade Union leader, makes Carson the object of his men's anger. Elizabeth Gaskell's debut novel is a powerful emotional drama and piercing record of her age, which 'profoundly affected and impressed' Charles Dickens and stirred the conscience of Victorian England to the plight of the industrial poor.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) began to write Mary Barton in 1845 to help overcome the grief of her son's death. Mary Barton was first published in two volumes in 1848, earning praise from other Victorian writers including Charles Dickens, W. M. Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot.