Mary Barton
Overview
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
, published in 1848
1848 in literature
The year 1848 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*R M Ballantyne -Life in the Wilds of North America*Anne Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall*Edward George Bulwer-Lytton - Harold...
. The story is set in the English city of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
during the 1830s and 1840s and deals heavily with the difficulties faced by the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
lower class.
The novel was subtitled "A Tale of Manchester Life." It begins in that city, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working-class families. John Barton is a great questioner of the distribution of wealth and the relations between rich and poor.
Unanswered Questions
