Mary Barton

In Manchester during the hungry 1840s, Mary Barton, the pretty daughter of a mill worker, is torn between Jem Wilson, an honest engineer who loves her, and Harry Carson, the handsome son of a rich mill owner, who flatters her with dreams of becoming a lady. Her father John, embittered by unemployment, hunger and the death of his son, becomes a trade unionist and a Chartist. When Harry Carson is shot dead, suspicion falls on Jem, and Mary must race against time to save him.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865), the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, saw the poverty of the city's workers at first hand. Her first novel, published anonymously in 1848, shocked middle-class readers and angered some factory owners. Compare her later North and South and the gentle comedy of Cranford.