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Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester

"Join Penguin author Ed Glinert, editor of Penguin Classics' Sherlock Holmes stories, in revealing the Manchester of Elizabeth Gaskell.

Elizabeth Gaskell published Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life anonymously in 1848. At last a novel that dealt with local society in all its raw brutality. Indeed with its harsh portrayal of the capitalist bosses who ran Manchester industry and commerce it caused something of a stir throughout the city.

The good folk who worshipped at the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel alongside her and her husband, William, the minister were horrified and suspected they were the target. How more horrified they were when they discovered the identity of the author!

Mary Barton was the first of an excellent series of novels that made Elizabeth Gaskell a major novelist. We will follow in her footsteps through haunts - the Portico Library, Cross Street Chapel, the Fever Hospital, Dover Street - which have changed (a bit), but where the tales still tell through the misty decades and finish at the re-opened and quite wonderful Elizabeth Gaskell House in Chorlton-on-Medlock."

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