Great fun! Mrs. Gaskell's gentle yet probing comedy of manners is a book worthy of many readings. There's a lot of dressing up in this book--wearing the perfect hat for the occasion, buying the latest material, dressing a cow in flannel, Peter's ill-recieved jokes. No clear plot, but then I don't usually read for the plots. The character studies here are priceless.

Ah, so delightful! I loved this. It's really a series of vignettes, and, if there is a plot at all, it doesn't show up until halfway through. But it's so funny! And sad! And it's all about women! I laughed aloud a few times, and almost cried a few other times.

Sigh. I'm such a sucker for this stuff. But I loved it. Despite its disjunctive narrative, I read the whole book in less than three days. But I'm strange that way.

For Happy (I would alert readers to spoilers, but there actually isn't much More...

Beautifully observed and gently funny, Cranford is less a novel than it is a series of vignettes, drawn from the lives of a small group of genteelly impoverished older women in a small town in mid-nineteenth century England. Gaskell is quite gentle with her characters, I think perhaps because she was aware of how limited a life she was creating for them—with all the social restrictions placed on unmarried women, with just enough social status to be unable to work to support themselves, but with More...

Negaidīju, ka šī grāmata būs tik laba, tomēr patīkami vīlos. Ar ironiju rakstīts par kāda ciemata ikdienas dzīvi, kurā liela traģēdija ir pat sīkumos. Krenfordā šķietami galvenais, kas nodarbina dāmu prātus ir tas, ko gan domās citi. Mazliet liekulības, mazliet iedomības, mazliet vientiesības, mazliet augstprātības, tomēr beigu beigās uzvar īsta draudzība, jo šīs dāmas, tā vietā, lai novērstos no nelaimē (saistīts ar finansēm) nokļuvušas draudzenes, saglabājot savu un neaizkarot draudzenes cieņu More...

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is a collection of short stories surrounding the small town of Cranford and the eccentric women who live there.

As I said, Cranford is a small town which is high in the population of female. In the first section of the book, every male who enters the town drops like flies making it feel jinxed or like an old fashioned sorority.

Elizabeth Gaskell's novel is a sequence of short stories that all intertwine. I'm typically not a short story reader so it took me a while to More...

To prime myself for Return to Cranford, the new Masterpiece Classic sequel to last year’s award-winning mini-series Cranford on PBS, I wanted to read Mrs. Gaskell’s original novel that it was adapted from. Since I am always short of reading time, I chose instead to listen to an audio recording, my favorite pastime during my commute to work. After a bit of research on Cranford audio book recordings, I settled on the Naxos edition. From my experience with their recording of Jane Austen’s novels I More...

After wading my way through a few duds, I was thrilled to read a true gem. I tried reading this once before. However, I was expecting a linear narrative and was therefore unprepared for this anecdotal novel. After watching the BBC miniseries (which, by the way, was excellent), I had a better idea of what to expect.

Prior to 'Cranford' my only experience with Elizabeth Gaskell was 'North and South.' Although 'North and South' is undoubtedly one of my favorite books, as a novel littered by death i More...

With two episodes of the Masterpiece adaptation behind me, I figured I should read this to avoid having it completely spoiled. The film writers had a job adapting this, I have to say, with the novel's first person narration, ironic narrative voice, and the serial nature with characters/plotlines coming and going quickly. I wonder where some of the film characters - Dr. Harrison, for one, or the little boy who poaches - who don't appear at all in the novel come from...are they in one of Elizabeth More...

This was really a very slim volume, but it was broken up into connected but quite separate stories - which is why it took me so long to read it. I picked it up here and there between other reads.

A charming book, easily read and discussing much the needs and efforts at gentility of a group of aging spinsters in the town of Cranford. We get a great sense of their economy and desire to remain in their stations in life - in spite of limited resources.

Not exactly a riveting book, but worth reading More...

I was at first puzzled by the narrator's description of Cranford as a town of Amazons, populated mainly by women. There appeared to be plenty of male characters, and the women--an assortment of Victorian spinsters and elderly widows--hardly seemed warriorlike. Yet while Gaskell describes her characters' eccentricities and petty concerns with sympathetic humor, she also conveys immense admiration for women's courage and resilience in the face of loss, for how women deal with social constraints, a More...

Such a wonderful and delightful book. It was poignant and sweet--sad at times--and laugh-out-loud funny at others. A real joy.

This book is so cute and has me laughing out loud. Definitely a new favorite!

I really liked the PBS production, so trying out the book (assuming it will be less melodramatic than Ruth was...)

Quando ero piccina mi capitava di fissare i quadri di casa mia e immaginarmi le storie che potevano coinvolgere le persone dipinte. Se ora ne avessi di fronte uno che rappresenta un paese della campagna inglese nella mia testa partirebbe la voce fuori campo che inizia a raccontare di Cranford, un luogo fuori dal tempo dove le persone sono cristallizzate in un attimo per mai cambiare.
La Gaskell rievoca in episodi la vita di un paese, Cranford appunto, abitato principalmente da donne che sono nel More...

Cranford n’est pas un roman : Cranford est un petit village en porcelaine dans lequel s’agitent et se débattent de petites poupées, figures féminines livrées à elles-mêmes, Amazones en jupons et coiffes de dentelle. L’auteur nous offre avec délice une succession d’intrigues qui, sous leur légèreté, révèlent les caractères de ses héroïnes. Tour à tour charmantes, généreuses ou ridicules, les dames de Cranford ont construit leur univers par l’accumulation de leurs expériences, que l’on pourrait qu More...

I picked this up due to a review by Jo Walton on Tor.com. She described it as something like a mid-19th Century English Lake Wobegone, which gives a tolerably accurate sense of the discursive tone. Charming and kindly, with only a tenuous thread of anything one might call a plot, but nonetheless absorbing. I quite liked it. It is available as a free e-edition on Amazon Kindle.

The first-person voice makes it very naturally a "told" story, untouched by the later cinematic techniques that infiltrat More...

For the Video review, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Os085...


Cranford is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell that looks into the more farcical sides of Victorian society. The novel has recently found fame in the BBC adaptation. I have not watched it so I know not its merits, nor do I care much. The novel is one however that seems, at its best to be misunderstood, and at its worst to be totally misread. The novel centres around a small village in which women are by far the predominant sex. More...

Someone asked me the other day what my favorite genre was. I said fiction. They asked me to be more specific. I said true fiction. Historical fiction? No, fiction that tells the truth. I gave Lewis and Austen as examples. Because their fiction is true, I am rather prickly about film adaptations that break the stories -- that make them less true.

Cranford isn't fiction I'd get prickly about. Which is why I can say it's one of those cases where I like the on-screen version better. The filmmakers d More...

I am tempted to describe Cranford as a "local color" novella for its quiet but consistent delineation of people and place. Plot is a secondary concern to character and setting here. As such, the novella has an extremely low key sensibility about it, which I appreciate when done well. Gaskell does it well. An additional perk is that the fictional Cranford (ostensibly based on the real Knutsford, which Gaskell knew well) is primarily populated by women, a quirk explained early on in the narrative. More...

I didn't love Cranford at first. It felt trivial and slow. But half way through the book I realized that I loved these characters, our narrator Miss Smith, the gossipy Miss Pole and most of all, the gentle, trusting Miss Matty.

The book is made up of 16 chapters; each chronicles a small event in the quiet English town of Cranford in the 1840s. The women in the town are a tight-knit group, skeptical of outsiders and protective of each other. There are many humorous sections with mistaken identiti More...

My first encounter with Cranford was in a literature class in college; we read the scene of the indecent oranges, and I was one of the few students who found the writing utterly hilarious. Many years later, I've found the time to listen to the audiobook--and Prunella Scales does a fine job of voicing the characters, although several sounded a bit too much alike for me to truly keep them apart without names.
The thing about Cranford is that, as far as plot goes, nothing truly happens. It is a seri More...

This is the first book I listened to on audio, read by Clare Wille and published by Naxos Audiobooks.

I'm a huge fan of the BBC adaptation with Judi Dench, so I knew I would get to the novel eventually. I started this while in China--sometimes it was easier to just close my eyes and listen than prop open a book and read. Cranford is a fascinating little village, with society dominated by elderly single women because the men (if they are there at all) make themselves scarce. The biggest different More...

Gaskell, Elizabeth. CRANFORD. (1852). ****.
Back when I took a course in 19th century English literature, Gaskell was one of the authors that was mentioned in passing, but never assigned on our reading list. She wrote several immensly popular books but didn’t fall into the category of literature as defined by the course syllabus. For those of you who don’t know this author, I need to crib from the short intro provided by the publisher. “Elizabeth Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in More...

"Wonderfully funny" dice la quarta di copertina di questo libro. Direi che è vero, ma solo a tratti. L'atmosfera è sicuramente atipica e un po' sognante: un villaggetto ottocentesco inglese in cui le donne comandano, o meglio imperversano,occupandosi con imperturbabile e sempre uguale leggiadria e ingenuità di ogni tipo di problema, dal colore più adatto ad un cappellino alla moda alla bancarotta della banca locale che minaccia di ridurre in povertà alcune di loro. L'autrice ricorda un po' Jane More...

Cranford is often called a comedy. There are humorous parts of the book, but it certainly is not funny throughout. And some of the humor might come from readers who do not respect the type of women portrayed in the book.

It was first published in 1851, so it gives a good feel for that time. It is the story of a handful of aging women who live in Cranford, England. Today Cranford is part of Greater London. Back then there was more separation.

Some of the women in the story have never married, some More...

The 1001 Books list has totally changed the way I read novels. It’s given me access to writers that have deeply influenced the way I see the world and has given me memories of characters and storylines that have been incredibly powerful. And then it’s introduced me to Elizabeth Gaskell and the trivial wittering rubbish of Cranford.

This is a book about absolutely nothing. I recently thought Northanger Abbey lacked any substance. How very wrong I was. Cranford redefines pointlessness. I waited in More...

Eh già, questo è stato un libro che ho amato a ogni pagina e che finirà nel gruppo degli Eletti, quei libri che per una ragione o per l'altra ho amato tanto e che porterei con me su un'isola deserta.
Ho amato ogni personaggio, ogni gesto provinciale, affettato, generoso, ostentato, ingenuo, dignitoso, tenero, onorevole, buono.
Ho amato delle donne sole, avvinghiate come l'edera al muro, alle loro tradizioni, a piccoli riti, a cerimoniali e regole non sempre sensate.
Ho amato la loro cerchia rist More...

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders above houses of a certain rent are women. If a married couple comes to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In More...