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Chapter 1. When Mary Barton is 13, her aunt Esther disappears. Shortly after, her mother, Mrs. Barton, dies in childbirth along with the baby. Mary’s widowed father John Barton throws himself into labor organizing among Manchester’s workers. When Mary is 16, John decides she must work.
Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life was the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class. Plot summary.
- Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
- 1848
Mary Barton, first novel by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, published in 1848. It is the story of a working-class family that descends into desperation during the depression of 1839. With its vivid description of squalid slums, Mary Barton helped awaken the national conscience.
- Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
- 1848
- A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. Oh! 'tis hard, 'tis hard to be working. The whole of the live-long day, When all the neighbours about one. Are off to their jaunts and play.
- A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY. Polly, put the kettle on, And let's have tea! And we'll all have tea. "Here we are, wife; didst thou think thou'd lost us?"
- JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE. But when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed—she had. Another morn than ours!
- OLD ALICE'S HISTORY. To envy nought beneath the ample sky; To mourn no evil deed, no hour mis-spent; And, like a living violet, silently. Return in sweets to Heaven what goodness lent,
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