author - "Elizabeth Gaskell"
Description
Cranford was first serialized in Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The structureless nature of the stories, and the fact that Gaskell was busy writing her novel Ruth at the time the Cranford shorts were being published, suggests that she didn’t initially plan for Cranford to be a cohesive novel.
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 nostalgic quality in a time when the societies and styles portrayed were already going out of fashion.
Though not especially popular at the time of publication, Cranford has since gained an immense following, including at least three television adaptations.
ht, the only light was derived from theglaring, flaring oil-lamps, hung above the doors of the morearistocratic mansions; just allowing space for the passers-by tobecome visible, before they again disappeared into the darkness,where it was no uncommon thing for robbers to be in waiting fortheir prey.
The traditions of those bygone times, even to the smallest socialparticular, enable one to understand more clearly thecircumstances which contributed to the formation of character.The daily life into which people are born, and into which theyare absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which onlyone in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and tobreak when the right time comes--when an inward necessity forindependent individual action arises, which is superior to alloutward conventionalities. Therefore, it is well to know whatwere the chains of daily domestic habit, which were the naturalleading strings of our forefathers before they learnt to goalone.
The picturesqueness
'But are all these quite necessary troubles?' asked Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas connected with a marriage.
'Oh, of course,' he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. 'There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding arranged?'
'Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have given me
Description
Cranford was first serialized in Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The structureless nature of the stories, and the fact that Gaskell was busy writing her novel Ruth at the time the Cranford shorts were being published, suggests that she didn’t initially plan for Cranford to be a cohesive novel.
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 nostalgic quality in a time when the societies and styles portrayed were already going out of fashion.
Though not especially popular at the time of publication, Cranford has since gained an immense following, including at least three television adaptations.
ht, the only light was derived from theglaring, flaring oil-lamps, hung above the doors of the morearistocratic mansions; just allowing space for the passers-by tobecome visible, before they again disappeared into the darkness,where it was no uncommon thing for robbers to be in waiting fortheir prey.
The traditions of those bygone times, even to the smallest socialparticular, enable one to understand more clearly thecircumstances which contributed to the formation of character.The daily life into which people are born, and into which theyare absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which onlyone in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and tobreak when the right time comes--when an inward necessity forindependent individual action arises, which is superior to alloutward conventionalities. Therefore, it is well to know whatwere the chains of daily domestic habit, which were the naturalleading strings of our forefathers before they learnt to goalone.
The picturesqueness
'But are all these quite necessary troubles?' asked Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas connected with a marriage.
'Oh, of course,' he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. 'There are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world's mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding arranged?'
'Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have given me