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Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (Version 2)

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (Version 2)

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Genre(s): ,

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Number of Chapters: 39

Length: 15 hours and 40 minutes

Language: English

"Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life" was Mrs Gaskell's first full-length novel. It was published anonymously in that tumultuous year of political change, 1848 - only a few months after the Communist Manifesto co-authored by her fellow Manchester-resident, Friedrich Engels. Engels's experience as agent in his father's cotton-spinning factory motivated him to write "The Condition of the Working Class in England", a classic account of the sufferings of the poor under the factory-system.

Elizabeth Gaskell's own personal contact with the plight of the poor cotton workers of Lancashire also compelled her to a compassionate examination of their lives; but as a middle-class woman, married to a Unitarian minister, her approach to her subject took on a more emotionally complex significance; influenced by religious faith but also by more personal considerations.

In the brief preface to the novel, Mrs Gaskell hints at her initial impulse. The loss of a beloved child in infancy led her to seek a therapeutic outlet, but one which left her uncertain of her capacity to contextualize her public, writerly response to the tragedies occurring in the surrounding society of Manchester's poorest classes: "I know nothing of Political Economy, or the theories of trade..." She was, however, determined to portray, in novelistic form, the intimate connection between the private experience of her characters and the social forces of her time. The success of the novel led her to proclaim her authorship and move on to further works of fiction, which have secured her in our times a mounting reputation as one of the leading novelists of the mid-Victorian period.

Certainly the novel features numerous death-scenes, all conveyed with a depth of sympathy that contrasts with the queasy iambics with which Dickens orchestrated the notorious demise of Little Nell. Mrs Gaskell was not, like Dickens, a London-based novelist observing the sufferings of the provincial poor with a journalistic detachment - as evidenced in his own admirable, Lancashire-based novel "Hard Times". Gaskell lived among the people whose attenuated lives she chronicled - and however hesitantly, as a début novelist, she rendered their experience in literary terms, her writing presents us with a true insight into the sufferings of individuals at a point in history when the mass of human beings fell casualty to the forms of economic progress following upon the Industrial Revolution. Most impressively she called into question the political and social cost of creating a resentful proletariat despairing of survival in (to quote Karl Marx) a "heartless world".

Our reader Tony Foster is a resident of Manchester and a near-neighbour of Mrs Gaskell (allowing for their separation in time). His superb narration renders the native speech of her characters with an authenticity which ideally conveys the spirit of this book. A truly moving experience awaits everyone who gives ear to this 'Tale of Manchester Life'. (Summary by Martin Geeson)

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PREFACE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER I - A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER II - A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER III - JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER IV - OLD ALICE'S HISTORY (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER V - THE MILL ON FIRE--JEM WILSON TO THE RESCUE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER VI - POVERTY AND DEATH (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER VII - JEM WILSON'S REPULSE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER VIII - MARGARET'S DEBUT AS A PUBLIC SINGER (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER IX - BARTON'S LONDON EXPERIENCES (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER X - RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XI - MR. CARSON'S INTENTIONS REVEALED (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XII - OLD ALICE'S BAIRN (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XIII - A TRAVELLER'S TALES (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XIV - JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XV - A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XVI - MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XVII - BARTON'S NIGHT-ERRAND (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XVIII - MURDER (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XIX - JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XX - MARY'S DREAM--AND THE AWAKENING (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXI - ESTHER'S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXII - MARY'S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXIII - THE SUB-POENA (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXIV - WITH THE DYING (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXV - MRS. WILSON'S DETERMINATION (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXVI - THE JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXVII - IN THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXVIII - ''JOHN CROPPER, AHOY!'' (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXIX - A TRUE BILL AGAINST JEM (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXX - JOB LEGH'S DECEPTION (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXI - HOW MARY PASSED THE NIGHT (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXII - THE TRIAL AND VERDICT--''NOT GUILTY.'' (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXIII - REQUIESCAT IN PACE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXIV - THE RETURN HOME (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXV - ''FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.'' (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXVI - JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXVII - DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MURDER (Tony Foster)
CHAPTER XXXVIII - CONCLUSION (Tony Foster)
The audiobook Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (Version 2) falls under the genres of , . It is written by .