The spin number in The Classics Club Spin was announced yesterday. It’s number …
which for me is Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by October 31, 2019.
I’ve read some of Elizabeth Gaskell’s books and enjoyed them. This is her first book, set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842.
Here’s the blurb from Amazon:
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner’s son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary’s dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous Chartist agitator John Barton, Mary Barton powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the ‘hungry forties’ as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskell’s great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.
Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?
BooksPlease 
This does sound really intriguing, Margaret. I do like novels where we see the larger events playing out through the eyes of the individual people who live through them. I hope you’ll enjoy this one.
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Thanks, Margot – I hope so too.
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I’ve read some very positive reviews of this book, Margaret, though I can’t remember where now! I hope you enjoy it. I’m happy with my choice: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Appropriate for the season, and short!
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Thanks, Sandra. I’ve read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and enjoyed it, so I hope you do too.
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I’m currently reading a history book about Peterloo and was thinking I really ought to read some Gaskell soon. You can test this one out for me. 😉 Enjoy!
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I haven’t read much of Gaskell’s work – just Cranford and Wives and Daughters – so I’m looking forward to reading Mary Barton. I’d almost forgotten that I have Jenny Uglow’s biography ‘Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories’, which I haven’t read yet! I must get it off the shelves …
How are you getting on with the Peterloo book?
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It’s very good, but it’s one of these very heavyweight detailed histories so I can’t take more than a few pages at a time. And I keep forgetting who everyone is… 😉
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It looks very detailed and well researched so I’m not surprised that it’s taking you a while to read and sort out who is who. I’m hoping to read it too.
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It’s well worth the effort. 🙂
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Margaret, I hope you enjoy Mary Barton – I am hoping to read it at some point. I also took part in the Spin and I will be re-reading the wonderful Persuasion by Jane Austen. 🙂
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I read North & South a number of years with great enjoyment, & picked up Uglow’s bio in a second hand shop not long after – but the font is sooooo small in my edition, I will need to feel very brave indeed to tackle it.
Good luck with Mary 🙂
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