A Tale of Manchester Life
GASKELL'S SCARCEST NOVEL
Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life
Chapman & Hall, 1848.
First edition. Two volumes. Publisher's plum cloth with gilt titles to the spine and floral borders and central arabesques in blind to the covers. Advert leaf preceding title page of vol. I. A fine set, crisp and clean with just a touch of fading to the spines, but bright gilt. Internally, perfect hinges with an early ownership name to the front endpapers, but very clean throughout. An exceptional copy.
A superb copy of Gaskell's first novel and rarest work, listed first in Sadeir's comparative scarcities with no copy listed in the main body of his catalogue.
An important and mould-breaking Victorian novel which shocked its readership with its vivid descriptions of contrasting conditions across the provincial class divide, a subject which had hitherto been mainly treated from a London-centric perspective.
"Mary Barton was the first novel to combine sincerity of purpose, convincing portrayal of character, and a largely unprejudiced picture of certain aspects of industrial life." - Annette Hopkins (Mary Barton: A Victorian Best Seller in The Trollopian 1948).
Stock ID: 44247
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