John Halifax, Gentleman

Like Charles Dickens’s beloved David Copperfield, John Halifax is an orphan, determined to make his success through honest hard work. He becomes an apprentice to Abel Flecher, a tanner and a Quaker, and is soon befriended by Abel’s invalid son, Phineas, who chronicles John’s success in business and love, rising from the humblest of origins to the pinnacle of wealth made possible by England’s Industrial Revolution.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik explores the sweeping transformation wrought by this revolutionary technological age, including the rise of the middle class and its impact on the social, economic, and political makeup of the nation as it moved from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik was born in Staffordshire, England, in 1826. The daughter of a local minister, Craik was raised from an early age to value education and literature. She moved to London at the age of twenty and quickly became a popular author, publishing numerous short stories to considerable commercial and critical acclaim. An affable and witty conversationalist, Craik became something of a celebrity in London society. In 1854 she married George Lillie Craik, a partner with Alexander Macmillan at the publishing house Macmillan & Co. She died in 1887.

A young orphan goes from rags to riches in this remarkable tale of friendship, love, and adventure at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Like Charles Dickens's beloved Oliver Twist, John Halifax is an orphan. Determined to make his success through honest hard work, he becomes an apprentice to Abel Fletcher, a tanner and Quaker, whose invalid son, Phineas, befriends John as a young boy. Together they embark upon numerous adventures, with Phineas narrating John's noble struggles in business and love. Spanning four decades, the novel chronicles John's improbable rise to industrial fortune and contested marriage to the noblewoman Ursula. On his journey, John must overcome the deep prejudices of an aristocracy that refuses to view him as anything but a simple commoner, no matter his professional achievements or strength of character. In John Halifax, Gentleman Dinah Maria Mulock deftly explores the sweeping transformations wrought by the Industrial Revolution, including the rise of the middle class and its impact on the social, economic, and political makeup of Great Britain as it transitioned from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century.

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