Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

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Cranford

is Mrs Gaskell's best-known and best-loved work. Until relatively recently it continued to be regarded as the quaintly comic and nostalgic depiction of provincial life which was enthusiastically embraced by Mrs Gaskell's contemporaries and which the work itself appears to be.

Cranford

began life, after all, as a short story (now the first two chapters of the book) written for Dickens's periodical

Household Words

and worked up from an earlier story-essay, “The Last Generation in England”, in which Mrs Gaskell had made use of her childhood experiences of the small country town of Knutsford. These opening chapters offer a distilled version of

Cranford

entire. Their distinctive hallmark is a concentration, through representative episodic sketches, upon a community of middle-aged…

2169 words

Citation: Billington, Josie. "Cranford". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 November 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5808, accessed 19 March 2024.]

5808 Cranford 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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