SOURCE: Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “The Early Industrial Novel: Mary Barton and Its Predecessors.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 63, no. 1 (autumn 1980): 11-30.

In the following essay, Fryckstedt examines early industrial fiction that inspired Gaskell's novel, particularly the writings of Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Stone, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna.

When Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life was published anonymously in October 1848 the effect was electric. Contemporary writers and reviewers alike stressed the novelty of Mrs Gaskell's undertaking. Carlyle, for one, hailed the book as ‘a real contribution (about the first real one) toward developing a huge subject, which has lain dumb too long.’¹ Still, despite such assertions, Mary Barton was hardly the first fictional attempt to render the problems afflicting the rapidly increasing manufacturing population of England. By 1848 there existed already a well-established literary genre of industrial fiction and only by placing Mary Barton against this...