Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell originally serialized Cranford in Charles Dickens's magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853, and the resulting novel-in-sketches has stayed in print ever since. The book is set in a small English country town modeled on Knutsford, Cheshire, where Gaskell grew up, and inhabited almost entirely by genteel widows and aging spinsters who have constructed a private kingdom of decorum, calling cards, mended lace, and quiet financial precarity. Narrated by the visiting young Mary Smith, Cranford follows the unflappable Miss Jenkyns and her younger sister Miss Matty through small disasters, a chinaware crisis, a runaway bull, the failure of a country bank, that ripple through the town. Gaskell writes with affection and a touch of irony, capturing a way of life already vanishing under industrial England. A 2007 BBC adaptation with Judi Dench introduced a new generation.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Cranford
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In the small English town of Cranford in the 1840s, a community of mostly unmarried older women lives by careful rules of economy and propriety. A returning narrator collects their slow, tender stories.
Yes. Cranford was first serialized in 1851 and is in the public domain. Free editions are available legally through Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, and similar archives.
Yes. The BBC's 2007 Cranford miniseries, starring Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, and Eileen Atkins, draws on Cranford and two related Elizabeth Gaskell stories. A follow-up, Return to Cranford, aired in 2009.
Cranford was written by Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1853 by Dent.
Cranford is 244 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Cranford takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Cranford is a standalone novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, not part of a series.
Cranford is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.