Cranford
Ratings39
Average rating3.8
Cranford was first serialized in Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The structureless nature of the stories, and the fact that Gaskell was busy writing her novel Ruth at the time the Cranford shorts were being published, suggests that she didn’t initially plan for Cranford to be a cohesive novel.
The short vignettes follow the activities of the society in the fictional small English country town of Cranford. Gaskell drew from her own childhood in Knutsford to imbue her settings and characters with a nostalgic quality in a time when the societies and styles portrayed were already going out of fashion.
Though not especially popular at the time of publication, Cranford has since gained an immense following, including at least three television adaptations.
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A sweet, enjoyable read. Character-driven rather than plot-driven, so it was a bit slow at times. The characters were delightful, though, and the writing was good. Worth reading at least once.
A modern soap opera aint' got nothing on Crawford. A wayward son who leaves home abruptly, and his mother dies in her grief at his departure. A bank scandal and a rich woman loses everything. A high-and-mighty woman arrives, townspeople are kept from her because they are not good enough, and it is learned that the woman wasn't even rich enough to ever see the queen.
A fabulous picture of small-town England in the mid-1800s.
