SOURCE: Handley, Graham. “Mrs. Gaskell's Reading: Some Notes on Echoes and Epigraphs in Mary Barton.” Durham University Journal 28, no. 3 (June 1967): 131-38.

In the following essay, Handley examines some of the epigraphs used in Gaskell's novel and their relevance to the meaning of the work as a whole.

In her first novel, Mrs. Gaskell followed the practice of some of her predecessors and contemporaries in prefixing epigraphs to each of the chapters. This is a commonplace in fiction—certainly it was used by Dorothy Sayers as late as the 1930's—and it also occurs in nineteenth century narrative poetry. Of the eighteenth century writers Mrs. Radcliffe, close on the Romantic period, indulges lavishly in the form, raiding the larder of minor poetry in order to supply herself with appropriate quotations of a morbid or merely scenic value. Since none of the major eighteenth century novelists uses the convention, she...