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Jem’s heart beat violently when he saw the gay, handsome young man approaching, with a light, buoyant step. This, then, was he whom Mary loved. It was, perhaps, no wonder; for he seemed to the poor smith so elegant, so well-appointed, that he felt the superiority in externals, strangely and painfully, for an instant. Then something uprose within him, and told him that a man’s a man for a’ that, for a’ that, and twice as much a’ that. And he no longer felt troubled by the outward appearance of his rival. -from Chapter XV As interest in 19th-century English literature by women has been reinvigorated by a resurgence in popularity of the works of Jane Austen, readers are rediscovering a writer whose fiction, once widely beloved, fell by the wayside. British novelist ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL (1810-1865)-whose books were sometimes initially credited to, simply, Mrs. Gaskell -is now recognized as having created some of the most complex and broadminded depictions of women in the literature of the age, and is today justly celebrated for her precocious use of the regional dialect and slang of England’s industrial North. Mary Barton-Gaskell’s first novel, originally published anonymously in 1848-established her reputation as a champion of the working class. Set in Manchester, where the author herself settled as the wife of a progressive preacher, it concerns the trials and tribulations of two poor families, the Bartons and the Wilsons, and a tragedy that cements their joint fate and highlights the class divide in highly stratified Victorian society. Friend and literary companion to the likes of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte-the latter of whom Gaskell wrote an acclaimed 1857 biography-Gaskell is today being restored to her rightful place alongside them. This charming replica volume is an excellent opportunity for 21st-century fans of British literature to embrace one of its most unjustly forgotten authors.
