"The Lady and the Luddite" by Linden Salter. [review - radio script]

Abstract

"The Lady and the Luddite" is an historical romance by English-born Northern Territory writer Linden Salter. Salter has taken characters and incidents from Charlotte Bronte’s second novel "Shirley", and shaped an exciting tale of class revolt and forbidden love, set in Yorkshire in Regency times. The Industrial Revolution, and its violent opposition by the Luddites, working men driven to destroy the machines which are stealing their jobs, forms the setting for both novels. However, while Bronte’s heroine, the heiress Shirley Keeldar, marries against the wishes of her family, her husband is an educated man of a good though impoverished family; whereas Salter’s Shirley falls for a working-class hero, a Luddite named Tom Mellor.