Mary Barton (NHB Modern Plays): Stage Version

By Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell's panoramic novel of Victorian England, adapted for the stage by the author of Iron. Premiered at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006.

Manchester in the 1840s. By day, Mary Barton works in a dress shop making gowns for the daughters of the newly moneyed mill owners. By night, Mary aspires to join their class. As she strives to better herself, murder, intrigue and romance take over her life and the lives of those she loves.

Fast-paced, epic and exciting, Mary Barton presents a panorama of Manchester life from the mill owners' new prosperity to the thousands of ordinary people living and dying in their factories.

'full of heat and passion, Munro's filleted version retains both Gaskell's beady eye for detail and her compassion for all humanity' - Guardian

'powerful... Manchester's dark history in riveting microcosm' - The Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Oct 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788501477

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell was an English author and poet, and is best-known for her classic novels Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters. Gaskell was a contemporary and an associate of many other early nineteenth-century writers, including Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charlotte Bronte, and was commissioned by Bronte’s father upon the author’s death to write her biography, The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Gaskell died in 1865 at the age of 55.