Cranford (Penguin Classics)

Cranford (Penguin Classics)
A gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranford describes 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 characters—including the dignified Lady Glenmire and the duplicitous showman Signor Brunoni—Cranford is a portrait of kindness, compassion, and hope.
Customer Review: A village of Amazons
This novella has a good deal of charm and real feeling--I don't think you'll soon forget Miss Matty, who is the center of these little stories, even if her older sister was much more forceful in character. The efforts of the ladies of the village--and it is pretty much ladies--to cope with limited incomes, burglars, death, love, tea, cows, servants, and addressing the nobility are both funny and poignant. However much they bicker and contend with each other, when the chips are down, you'll find them (or their handmaidens) at the door with the 19th century equivalent of a casserole. (For one born in New England, these ladies are very reminiscent of much older relatives.) Heartily recommended.
Customer Review: Come to Cranford...
Elizabeth Gaskell's 1853 novel "Cranford" is a subtle and often sly portrait of life in a fictional mid-19th century rural English village. At the center of the novel is a circle of spinster and widowed females who wrestle mightily with the challenges of lives of genteel poverty. On its surface, "Cranford" is a comedy of manners, but its episodes have surprising and often moving depth. "Cranford" was originally published as a series of short stories, all narrated by Miss Mary Smith, a frequent visitor to the village and the young friend of its leading spinster ladies Miss Deborah and Miss Matty Jenkyns. The chapters are therefore not quite chronological in the telling; characters overlap but plot lines appear, disappear, and sometimes reappear. The narrative works through the relationships of the circle of women, as they deal with births and deaths, marriages, questions of fashion and manners, and such mundane events as a traveling magic show and a bank failure. Men are suffered to live in Cranford, but it seems that it is the women who actually arrange everything important in the village. The reader cannot help but be drawn into their lives through Gaskell's authentic dialogue and superb sense of place. "Cranford" was the basis for a Masterpiece Theater mini-series in the Spring of 2008, and is well worth reading on its own for its sympathetic portrait of a lifestyle now a distant memory. This Penguin addition includes an informative introduction by Patricia Ingram, extensive notes on 19th century customs, and a final chapter on Cranford written by Gaskell years after the original series.