Cranford is Elizabeth Gaskell's gently comic picture of life and manners in an English country village during the 1830s. It describes the small adventures in the lives of two middle-aged sisters in reduced circumstances, Matilda and Deborah Jenkyns, who do their best to maintain their standards of propriety, decency, and kindness. At the center of the novel is Miss Matty, whose warm heart and tender ways compel affection and regard from everyone around her. Also revealed are the foibles and attributes of the pompous Mrs. Jamieson and her awesome butler, the genial Captain Brown, the loyal housemaid Martha, and others.
Using an intimate, gossipy voice that never turns sentimental, Gaskell skillfully conveys the old-fashioned habits, subtle class distinctions, and genteel poverty of the townspeople. Cranford is one of the author's best-loved works.
This peek at small-town life in Victorian England opens with the delightful statement that the village of Cranford "is in possession of the Amazons." Women own the finer homes, and few gentlemen are in residence. Frequent visitor Mary Smith relates the Cranford happenings. Reader Nadia May lends an authentic air to the women's complaints about bonnets and servants, adding a somber note when the villagers experience death and robbery. The women reveal their true characters when the respected Miss Jenkins faces financial ruin. Ironically, it's a man who rescues this "Amazon" from her plight. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), novelist and biographer, was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in London. She was reared by an aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, which became the model for village settings in her novels. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister. Her first novel, Mary Barton, published in 1848, was immensely popular and brought her to the attention of Charles Dickens, who solicited her work for his periodical, Household Words, for which she wrote the series subsequently reprinted as Cranford. She wrote novels, short stories, and a biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
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