Cranford

<p><i>Cranford</i> was first serialized in <a href=" Dickens’</a> magazine <i>Household Words</i> between 1851 and 1853. The structureless nature of the stories, and the fact that <a href=" was busy writing her novel <i>Ruth</i> at the time the <i>Cranford</i> shorts were being published, suggests that she didn’t initially plan for <i>Cranford</i> to be a cohesive novel.</p> <p>The short vignettes follow the activities of the society in the fictional small English country town of Cranford. Gaskell drew from her own childhood in Knutsford to imbue her settings and characters with a nostalgi…