Editorial Reviews
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen
While Mary Barton is literally a murder mystery, it is also an abundantly detailed and sympathetic view of the nineteenth-century English weaving village of Manchester and some of its people. Mary Barton is young, kind, and beautiful - perhaps dangerously so. John Barton, her hearty and intelligent but grievously uneducated father who "could never abide the gentlefolk," pours fierce love and courage into his family and work. When Mary's beautiful Aunt Esther disappears, her beauty is blamed: "Not but what beauty is a sad snare. Here was Esther so puffed up, that there was no holding her in." Mary's love - for her father, her friends, her charming rich suitor (the son of a factory owner), and his rival, her faithful childhood friend Jem who "loves her above life itself" - provides rich texture and suspense in this finely spun tale: will Mary's pride be her ruin? Will Jem pay with his life for his love of Mary? Interspersed with sparse but regular authorial observation, scenes from family life, work, and love in a nineteenth-century industrial village come alive. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Sally Mitchell, Temple University
Another splendid edition from Broadview with the usual high standard of helpful footnotes...
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Mary Barton: Penguin Classics
Mary Barton: Penguin Classics,Elizabeth Gaskell,MacDonald Daly,Penguin Classics,014043464X,Classics,Fathers and daughters,Fiction,Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Literature: Classics,Manchester (England),Triangles (Interpersonal relat,Triangles (Interpersonal relations),Working class women,19th century fiction,Classic fiction,Fiction / Classics
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