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Summary
Summary
A gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranforddescribes the small adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Rich with humor and filled with vividly memorable charactersÂincluding the dignified Lady Glenmire and the duplicitous showman Signor BrunoniÂCranfordis a portrait of kindness, compassion, and hope.
Author Notes
Elizabeth Gaskell was born on September 29, 1810 to a Unitarian clergyman, who was also a civil servant and journalist. Her mother died when she was young, and she was brought up by her aunt in Knutsford, a small village that was the prototype for Cranford, Hollingford and the setting for numerous other short stories. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. She participated in his ministry and collaborated with him to write the poem Sketches among the Poor in 1837.
Our Society at Cranford was the first two chapters of Cranford and it appeared in Dickens' Household Words in 1851. Dickens liked it so much that he pressed Gaskell for more episodes, and she produced eight more of them between 1852 and 1853. She also wrote My Lady Ludlow and Lois the Witch, a novella that concerns the Salem witch trials. Wives and Daughters ran in Cornhill from August 1864 to January 1866. The final installment was never written but the ending was known and the novel exists now virtually complete. The story centers on a series of relationships between family groups in Hollingford. Most critics agree that her greatest achievement is the short novel Cousin Phillis.
Gaskell was also followed by controversy. In 1853, she offended many readers with Ruth, which explored seduction and illegitimacy that led the "fallen woman" into ostracism and inevitable prostitution. The novel presents the social conduct in a small community when tolerance and morality clash. Critics praised the novel's moral lessons but Gaskell's own congregation burned the book and it was banned in many libraries. In 1857, The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published. The biography was initially praised but angry protests came from some of the people it dealt with.
Gaskell was against any biographical notice of her being written during her lifetime. After her death on November 12, 1865, her family refused to make family letters or biographical data available.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
Done that, been there, seen the TV serial, got the T-shirt (Miss Matty is the lick), but have you read the book? The problem with screen adaptations of period pieces is that they inevitably fall into the same trap. Put a theatrical dame into a bonnet and willy-nilly, no matter how many Baftas she's bagged, she becomes a pantomime dame. Cranford wasn't inhabited exclusively by daft old biddies wearing bonnets, shawls and frozen expressions of scandalised incredulity; Mrs Gaskell wrote about real people - some, admittedly, with eccentric ways, but nonetheless genuine. What makes her best-known book, a quintessentially English take on the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, so beguiling is the gently ironic tone of the young narrator, Mary Smith. This is the fourth Cranford I've heard - Prunella Scales did the last - and for once, in Clare Wille, they've got the right-aged reader. Mary (unlike Prunella) doesn't judge. She observes. Her cool, clear gaze misses nothing in this mid-Victorian provincial backwater. You can hear her smiling at its preoccupations with thrift, etiquette, class, crochet, ribbons, gossip and the growing coolness between Miss Jenkins, doyenne of the tea table, and Captain Brown, who finds Boz more entertaining than Samuel Johnson. "It was the only difference of opinion they had ever had, but that difference was enough. Miss Jenkins could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown, and though he did not reply, he drummed with his fingers, which action she felt and resented as very disparaging to Dr Johnson." Oh, if only life were still as simple. Caption: article-audio16.1 Done that, been there, seen the TV serial, got the T-shirt (Miss Matty is the lick), but have you read the book? The problem with screen adaptations of period pieces is that they inevitably fall into the same trap. Put a theatrical dame into a bonnet and willy-nilly, no matter how many Baftas she's bagged, she becomes a pantomime dame. - Sue Arnold.
