Mrs. G.L. Banks (1821–1897)
Author of The Manchester Man
About the Author
Works by Mrs. G.L. Banks
Sybilla and other stories 1 copy
Glory : a Wiltshire 1 copy
The slowly grinding mills 1 copy
Forbidden to marry, a novel 1 copy
Caleb Booth's clerk 1 copy
Associated Works
Gaslit Horror: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Lafcadio Hearn, Bernard Capes and Others (2008) — Contributor — 37 copies
The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (Annotated): Volume 15 (2023) — Contributor — 2 copies
Eighteen Stories For Girls 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Varley, Isabella
Banks, Mrs. G. Linnæus
Banks, Isabella Varley - Birthdate
- 1821-03-25
- Date of death
- 1897-05-04
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- poet
novelist
women's rights activist
public lecturer - Short biography
- Isabella Banks, née Varley, known as Mrs. G.L. Banks, was born in Manchester, England. Both of her parents were active in local politics and her father was elected a town alderman and magistrate. Isabella began writing as a child and published one of her poems in The Manchester Guardian at age 16. Ivy Leaves, her first collection of poetry, was published in 1844. For a while, she earned her living running a school at Cheetham in Lancashire. In 1846, she married George Linnaeus Banks, a journalist and editor, with whom she had 8 children. After the marriage, she wrote under the name of Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks, although she sometimes published under her birth name. The family moved frequently for her husband's work and Mrs. Banks contributed articles to newspapers in various cities. She began producing novels in 1865. Some became bestsellers and were reprinted into the 20th century. Her most memorable work was The Manchester Man, first serialized in Cassell's Magazine in 1872 before being published in three volumes in 1876. It's considered an important historical novel of the period, with its attention to local detail and vivid accounts of the Peterloo Massacre 1819 and the Corn-Law riots; it is still widely read. Mrs. Banks campaigned for women's rights and gave public lectures in support of the cause.
- Nationality
- UK
- Places of residence
- Manchester, England, UK
Hackney, London, England, UK
London, England, UK - Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Burial location
- Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, London, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- London, England, UK
Members
Reviews
'You and I know what Manchester men are made of, and that young fellow has good stuff in him! He was made to rise, sirs.'
A delightful book, albeit weakened by a slightly rushed conclusion, about the rise of the 'Manchester man' and the history of the city. Part Dickensian metaphor and social commentary, part Victorian romance, Mrs Banks wrote of early industrial Manchester in 1874 (serialised for Cassell's Monthly Magazine and published two years later). A baby is plucked from the flood show more waters of the River Irk by a poor tanner, and taken home to be raised by his young daughter. Given every opportunity in life - a scholarship to a Blue Coat school (now Chetham's School of Music), an apprenticeship with a local tradesman, marriage to a gentleman's daughter - Jabez Clegg, as he is named by the delightfully wilful and cantankerous vicar, embodies the spirit of the Manchester man - integrity, strength, forthrightness, determination and the ambition to earn for himself what others are born into. He falls in love with a girl 'above his station', and is bullied by the spoiled son of his sponsor, but Jabez's character ultimately wins him success and happiness. The message is rather heavy-handed, but the story enjoyable for all the social and historical instruction.
This forgotten novel, reprinted from a later edition containing illustrations by Charles Green and Hedley Fitton, should be more widely known, and even taught in schools! Banks manages to combine a potted history of nineteenth century Manchester, covering the Peterloo massacre and other local events and celebrities of the time, with an adventurous and engrossing bildungsroman, only rushing headlong into melodrama towards the close (a whole slew of coincidences and disasters serve to remove unwelcome and unfortunate obstacles between Jabez and his reward for persevering!)
Very much of its time, but none the less readable for that, and full of funny and sympathetic characters (bar the villain of the piece, of course!) show less
A delightful book, albeit weakened by a slightly rushed conclusion, about the rise of the 'Manchester man' and the history of the city. Part Dickensian metaphor and social commentary, part Victorian romance, Mrs Banks wrote of early industrial Manchester in 1874 (serialised for Cassell's Monthly Magazine and published two years later). A baby is plucked from the flood show more waters of the River Irk by a poor tanner, and taken home to be raised by his young daughter. Given every opportunity in life - a scholarship to a Blue Coat school (now Chetham's School of Music), an apprenticeship with a local tradesman, marriage to a gentleman's daughter - Jabez Clegg, as he is named by the delightfully wilful and cantankerous vicar, embodies the spirit of the Manchester man - integrity, strength, forthrightness, determination and the ambition to earn for himself what others are born into. He falls in love with a girl 'above his station', and is bullied by the spoiled son of his sponsor, but Jabez's character ultimately wins him success and happiness. The message is rather heavy-handed, but the story enjoyable for all the social and historical instruction.
This forgotten novel, reprinted from a later edition containing illustrations by Charles Green and Hedley Fitton, should be more widely known, and even taught in schools! Banks manages to combine a potted history of nineteenth century Manchester, covering the Peterloo massacre and other local events and celebrities of the time, with an adventurous and engrossing bildungsroman, only rushing headlong into melodrama towards the close (a whole slew of coincidences and disasters serve to remove unwelcome and unfortunate obstacles between Jabez and his reward for persevering!)
Very much of its time, but none the less readable for that, and full of funny and sympathetic characters (bar the villain of the piece, of course!) show less
Allan's letter had set the scientific enthusiast thinking for the time being; but the lines of thought crossed and diverged, and soon his fears for his stepson were lost in the reminder of his other promise to Honest John, and in the gathering up of ideas and the marshalling of facts for the lectures to be written. (226-27)
I've set a goal for myself of reading all the Victorian scientist novels I've never got around to, or discovered after reading for my exams and dissertation, because my show more aim is to submit a book proposal soon, and I want to make sure I haven't missed anything important before I do my revisions. That leads me to this clunkily titled novel, which was serialized in 1879 and published in three volumes in 1880.
Mostly it's a tale of a cluster of connected characters with, as the use of "wooers" indicates, some emphasis on who is engaged to whom. One character, Mr. Archibald Thorpe, is a man of science, specifically an amateur geologist; he's not a focal character, but his children and step-children are (he's the "scientific enthusiast" in the above quotation). To be honest, it's all terribly tedious. I didn't care about any of these characters or who they married or who they stole from or where they went to school. Like a lot of mediocre novelists, Banks manages to spin very little incident out into hundred of pages.
My own interests didn't even find very much to work with, because Mr. Thorpe's scientific perceptions very rarely entered into the book at first, until all of a sudden at the end of the first volume, where someone tells him something about his stepson Allan he really ought to have noticed before: "Mr. Thorpe, who had more knowledge of plants and stones than of humanity, opened his eyes in amazement" (219). The narrator later amplifies this by saying, "why should a man, pondering the occult secrets of creation, be expected to note the actions or development of young people, even though one should be his own? The fossilized past had a more intelligent voice for him than had the human present" (301). Like Swithin St. Cleeve in Hardy's Two on a Tower (published three years later), Thorpe's focus on cosmic immensities makes it difficult for his vision to alight upon particularities, only in this case, it's deep time, not deep space, that has trained his vision.
Mr. Thorpe is kind of your typical abstracted scientist who cares little for day-to-day matters (his stepdaughter basically has to raise his daughter for him when his wife / their mother dies), though when he's recruited to give geological lessons to the general public, he actually acquits himself fairly well. (Unlike Margaret Hale's father in the television version of North and South, also set in the North.) But speaking to and understanding the general public is a very different thing from his own children: "intent on the enlightenment of the masses, his mental vision had so wide and comprehensive a range, it is small wonder the inconsiderable individual on his own hearthstone were overlooked" (301-02). So three hundred pages and nearly one volume in, I finally got excited by the book. show less
I've set a goal for myself of reading all the Victorian scientist novels I've never got around to, or discovered after reading for my exams and dissertation, because my show more aim is to submit a book proposal soon, and I want to make sure I haven't missed anything important before I do my revisions. That leads me to this clunkily titled novel, which was serialized in 1879 and published in three volumes in 1880.
Mostly it's a tale of a cluster of connected characters with, as the use of "wooers" indicates, some emphasis on who is engaged to whom. One character, Mr. Archibald Thorpe, is a man of science, specifically an amateur geologist; he's not a focal character, but his children and step-children are (he's the "scientific enthusiast" in the above quotation). To be honest, it's all terribly tedious. I didn't care about any of these characters or who they married or who they stole from or where they went to school. Like a lot of mediocre novelists, Banks manages to spin very little incident out into hundred of pages.
My own interests didn't even find very much to work with, because Mr. Thorpe's scientific perceptions very rarely entered into the book at first, until all of a sudden at the end of the first volume, where someone tells him something about his stepson Allan he really ought to have noticed before: "Mr. Thorpe, who had more knowledge of plants and stones than of humanity, opened his eyes in amazement" (219). The narrator later amplifies this by saying, "why should a man, pondering the occult secrets of creation, be expected to note the actions or development of young people, even though one should be his own? The fossilized past had a more intelligent voice for him than had the human present" (301). Like Swithin St. Cleeve in Hardy's Two on a Tower (published three years later), Thorpe's focus on cosmic immensities makes it difficult for his vision to alight upon particularities, only in this case, it's deep time, not deep space, that has trained his vision.
Mr. Thorpe is kind of your typical abstracted scientist who cares little for day-to-day matters (his stepdaughter basically has to raise his daughter for him when his wife / their mother dies), though when he's recruited to give geological lessons to the general public, he actually acquits himself fairly well. (Unlike Margaret Hale's father in the television version of North and South, also set in the North.) But speaking to and understanding the general public is a very different thing from his own children: "intent on the enlightenment of the masses, his mental vision had so wide and comprehensive a range, it is small wonder the inconsiderable individual on his own hearthstone were overlooked" (301-02). So three hundred pages and nearly one volume in, I finally got excited by the book. show less
Volume III is the dullest part of the whole novel, focusing more than any other volume on "wooing" (I'm not sure where "winning" comes in), though we do learn than a man of science makes a better mine owner than someone trained in classical literature, because as Martin (Mr. Thorpe's ward) tells us, literature "foster[s] the romance in my nature" too much (108).
By this point, Mr. Thorpe himself has pretty much vanished. And then he does so literally; one day he goes off on a geological show more expedition into a cave he's discovered, and he just never comes back! (242-43) This seems like it could be exciting-- how far will a man's devotion to science take him?-- but it's told to us in retrospect without any detail. So much for a guy who had been a principal character.
So, all in all, not a particularly good novel, and from my perspective, not a particularly interesting one, either. Archibald Thorpe definitely fits into my general theory of the vision of the Victorian scientist, but he's so generic that he doesn't tell us anything new that we couldn't find in better novels by better authors. show less
By this point, Mr. Thorpe himself has pretty much vanished. And then he does so literally; one day he goes off on a geological show more expedition into a cave he's discovered, and he just never comes back! (242-43) This seems like it could be exciting-- how far will a man's devotion to science take him?-- but it's told to us in retrospect without any detail. So much for a guy who had been a principal character.
So, all in all, not a particularly good novel, and from my perspective, not a particularly interesting one, either. Archibald Thorpe definitely fits into my general theory of the vision of the Victorian scientist, but he's so generic that he doesn't tell us anything new that we couldn't find in better novels by better authors. show less
Unfortunately, volume I was pretty much it for interesting things done by Archibald Thorpe, the geologist character who was my reason for reading this novel. He largely sits out the second volume, which focuses on his boring children and stepchildren. He does pop up at its end again to be chastised by his stepdaughter for the fact that he is a bad candidate for sitting vigil at the bedside of his dying stepson: "Your mind would be lost among the stalactites and stalagmites of our caverns… show more in search of something rare and fresh for your collection, when Allan might want his pillow eased, or his shoulders covered, or his physic administered" (205). But that's about it, and don't we know how bad men of science are at dealing with people by now?
Allan's near death (he's about to be buried when his sister realizes he's still breathing, very faintly) is the highlight of volume II, but again it's a small chuck of a large stretch. show less
Allan's near death (he's about to be buried when his sister realizes he's still breathing, very faintly) is the highlight of volume II, but again it's a small chuck of a large stretch. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 19
- Also by
- 8
- Members
- 71
- Popularity
- #245,551
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 4
- ISBNs
- 16