Cranford - Couverture souple

INCLUDES MR HARRISON'S CONFESSIONS, CRANFORD AND MY LADY LUDLOW

'A comic masterpiece' Independent

Cranford is a sleepy northern town, but modern life, in the shape of a new railway, is pushing its way relentlessly towards it from Manchester, bringing with it new oppoertunities and excitement. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes further agitation, not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies. Meanwhile, Miss Matty Jenkyns watches the comings and goings and remembers when, as a girl, her own heart was broken.

See also: Middlemarch

Cranford is a humorous account of a nineteenth-century English village dominated by a group of genteel but modestly circumstanced women. By eschewing the conventional marriage plot with its nubile heroines and focusing instead on a group of middle-aged and elderly spinsters, Elizabeth Gaskell did something highly unusual within the novel genre. Through her masterful management of the novel's tone, she underscores the value and dignity of single women's lives even as she causes us to laugh at her characters' foibles. Charles Dickens was the first of many readers to extol its wit and charm, and it has consistently been Gaskell's most popular work.