Reading Order
Mary Barton Reading Order
Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell is her first published novel and the one that established her reputation as the first great novelist of the English working class — a novel of the Manchester slums in the hungry 1840s, organized around Mary Barton (the daughter of a Chartist worker who becomes entangled with two men: the mill owner's son Harry Carson, who courts her as a plaything, and Jem Wilson, the honest working man who loves her) and her father John Barton (a passionate Chartist who, radicalized by poverty and loss, shoots the mill owner's son and allows Jem to be charged with the murder). The novel was controversial from the moment of its publication: mill owners objected to its sympathetic portrayal of the workers' perspective; radicals objected to its failure to indict capitalism more directly. Gaskell was trying to do something unusual — to present the workers' suffering and their anger as comprehensible, to make the reader feel the reality of the life that produced Chartism and radicalism, without endorsing violence or abandoning the possibility of human reconciliation between masters and men.
Where to start
Mary Barton (1848) — the complete novel. Best Gaskell reading order: Mary Barton → Cranford → North and South → Wives and Daughters.
Complete Mary Barton Book List
- 1Buy
Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell·1848·The complete novel — Mary Barton, John Barton, Jem Wilson, and Manchester in the 1840s. Gaskell's first published novel and the investigation of Manchester working-class life that made her famous; the Penguin Classics edition with Macdonald Daly's introduction is recommended - 2Buy
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell·1855·The companion — Margaret Hale and John Thornton. The companion as the later, more complex investigation of the same industrial England: where Mary Barton investigates the condition-of-England question from the workers' perspective, North and South investigates it from the perspective of all parties — employer, employee, and Southern outsider - 3Buy
Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell·1866·Gaskell's companion last novel — Molly Gibson in Hollingford. The companion as the fullest realization of Gaskell's novelistic talent: where Mary Barton is organized around suffering and political anger, Wives and Daughters is organized around the social comedy of the provincial middle class, and together they show the full range of Gaskell's sympathy - 4Buy
Hard Times
Charles Dickens·1854·Dickens's companion investigation of the same industrial England — Gradgrind and Coketown. The companion as the satirical and polemical version of the same investigation: where Gaskell presents the industrial question through suffering and individual stories, Dickens presents it through caricature and moral allegory - 5Buy
Sybil
Benjamin Disraeli·1845·Disraeli's companion condition-of-England novel — the Two Nations. The companion as the political version of the same investigation: Disraeli's Sybil ('or, The Two Nations') and Gaskell's Mary Barton are the two great condition-of-England novels of the 1840s, and they represent the Tory-paternalist and the Liberal-sympathetic approaches to the same industrial crisis - 6Buy
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens·1841·Dickens's companion investigation of the suffering of the innocent in the industrial city. The companion as the Dickensian version of the same investigation of what industrial capitalism does to its vulnerable members: Little Nell in the industrial Midlands is the Dickens equivalent of Mary Barton in Manchester - 7Buy
The Condition of the Working Class in England
Friedrich Engels·1845·Engels's companion investigation of Manchester in the same period. The companion as the analytical companion: Engels's investigation of Manchester in 1844-45 (the same Manchester that Gaskell was writing about in the same years) provides the sociological analysis that Gaskell provides in fictional form, and reading them together is one of the most illuminating experiences available in understanding the 1840s - 8Buy
Ruth
Elizabeth Gaskell·1853·Gaskell's companion — Ruth Hilton, the seduced seamstress. The companion as the investigation of the fallen woman in the same period: where Mary Barton investigates the suffering of the working-class man and his daughter, Ruth investigates the suffering of the single woman who falls outside the protection of family and class
Mary Barton — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mary Barton about by Elizabeth Gaskell?
Mary Barton is about a working-class family in Manchester in the 1840s — the hungry decade of Chartism and the Irish famine. Mary Barton is a factory worker's daughter who is courted by the mill owner's son Harry Carson (who intends her as a plaything, not a wife) while the honest working man Jem Wilson loves her genuinely. Her father John Barton is a passionate Chartist who has been radicalized by poverty, loss (his wife dies early in the novel), and the visible contrast between the workers' suffering and the mill owners' prosperity. When the workers' petition to Parliament is rejected and Harry Carson publicly mocks the workers' demands, John Barton shoots him. The novel then becomes the story of Mary's desperate effort to save Jem Wilson, who has been charged with the murder, and of the slow unraveling of John Barton's guilt.
Why did Elizabeth Gaskell write Mary Barton?
Gaskell wrote Mary Barton as a direct response to the social crisis she witnessed in Manchester in the 1840s. She and her husband William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, worked directly with the Manchester poor; she knew the conditions of the factory workers' lives from personal observation, and the novel is full of specific detail — the food workers ate (or didn't eat), the diseases they died of, the layout of the slum courts, the wages paid and the conditions endured. She wrote the novel partly as an act of translation: to make the middle and upper classes understand why workers became Chartists and why the poor committed crimes that the comfortable could not comprehend from outside. She acknowledged in the preface that her sympathies were with the workers and that she did not fully understand the masters' perspective — a limitation that North and South, written six years later, explicitly tried to correct.
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