Abstract:
When Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848, she gave it the subtitle, A Tale of Manchester Life, and announced in her preface that the book's aim was to "give some utterance to the agony which from time to time convulses [the] dumb people" of Manchester (7).' An important aspect of this giving utterance was the use of the Lancashire dialect for the speech of her working-class characters. ...
