From the Bookshelf of The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910…

Mary Barton

Elizabeth Gaskell,

Shirley Foster (Editor)

Start date: July 1, 2018

Finish date: August 11, 2018

Discussion: Elizabeth Gaskell Collection

Discussion leader: Candace

Why we're reading this: Group Read 07/01/18 - 08/11/18
[close] Group Read 07/01/18 - 08/11/18

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What Members Thought

Sep 07, 2012 Kim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

This was Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel and it shows. It's signficantly less assured than her better known works, North and South, Cranford and Wives and Daughters. The eponymous heroine is at times annoying (although she grows in stature as the work progresses) and the narrative has a number of those features which make some readers avoid Victorian fiction: a leisurely pace, wordiness, preachiness, sentimentality and melodrama. The novel starts very slowly. At the half-way mark the pace picks ...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Mary rated it liked it

Shelves: books-read-2011

So...Mary Barton. Tough to know what to say about this. It struck me as pretty much a dry run for North and South. Same area, same themes, just less well-developed. And I do love North and South, so this watered-down version could never really match it.

I liked the characters, but I felt that they were all under developed. I didn't feel half as much sympathy for Mary as I wanted to and should have. And Jem, Margaret, John Barton, Aunt Esther - all deserved more attention, really. And I can never ...more

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