Life in the Iron Mills

(5 stars)

Stella McQueen

Excellent. Vividly described. Perfectly read. Beautifully depressing. Fascinating insight into the time, if romanticising poverty. I often listen to books to lull me to sleep. Elizabeth Klett is my favourite reader and this is the most beautiful and calming narration, despite the bleak topic.

Life in the Iron Mills

(5 stars)

stbalbach

<br />The 1861 novella <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_the_Iron_Mills" rel="nofollow"><i>Life in the Iron Mills</i></a> was the first American story to depict realistically the factory mill worker. It's about a Welsh pig iron worker in Wheeling, West Virgina who has little chance of escaping the fate of the working class - a short, brutal life. By showing the factory workers with sympathy and respect, Rebecca Harding Davis set out to reform social problems and popular misconceptions. She counters the notion, common at the time (and not uncommon today) that poverty is a genetic or even a personal failing, rather than a social one. She was one of the first in a long line of American authors who used realism (Theodore Dreiser), naturalism (Frank Norris) and later modernism (John Steinbeck) to describe the plight of the working class for the purpose of informing the reading public, the bourgeois, about the problems of the proletariat; indeed by the 1930s there was a whole genre of literature that sometimes goes by the name "proletariat literature". This is where it began. Read <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/lifeintheironmills_etk_librivox" rel="nofollow">via LibriVox</a>, narrated by Elizabeth Klett, whose Welsh accent during dialogue is remarkable. [STB|1124|04192011]

Life in the Iron Mills

(5 stars)

Raymond Restaino

This is a brief but poignant story of a harsh life, of unrequited love, of wasted talent, and the brutality of justice. It is written and read with elegance and beauty!

Could have been called death in the iron mills

(5 stars)

AlexandriaUK

Excellent reading by Ms Klett, haven't been disappointed by her narrative once. Shame author hasn't got any other works on this great site.

A sad tale

(4 stars)

Hospitable Georgian

Such a sad tale of life in the mills and how one decision could end such promise. Well read as always by Miz Klett

(5 stars)

Glenn Baker

What an ending it's almost agony to listen to it. The place is very similar to Dickens coke town in Hard times.Thankyou for this discovery.

A Powerful Story

(5 stars)

A LibriVox Listener

I have always loved this work, and this dramatic reading of it makes it even more powerful.

Intense

(3.5 stars)

Y. Michelle Webb

Language moving but a little hard for me to follow, even with Elizabeth reading