Elizabeth Gaskell
Paperback | Pages: 257 pages Rating: 3.85 | 35322 Users | 2238 Reviews
Mention Books Supposing Cranford
| Original Title: | Cranford |
| ISBN: | 0141439882 (ISBN13: 9780141439884) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Mary Smith, Miss Matty Jenkyns, Miss Deborah Jenkyns, Miss Pole, Betty Barker, Captain Brown, Thomas Holbrook, Peter Jenkyns |
Representaion As Books Cranford
'It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor...I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!' A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed by old-fashioned habits and dominated by friendships between women. Her wry account of rural life is undercut, however, by tragedy in its depiction of such troubling events as Matty's bankruptcy, the violent death of Captain Brown or the unwitting cruelty of Peter Jenkyns. Written with acute observation, Cranford is by turns affectionate, moving and darkly satirical. In her introduction, Patricia Ingham discusses Cranford in relation to Gaskell's own past and as a work of irony in the manner of Jane Austen. She also considers the implications of the novel in terms of class and empire. This edition also includes further reading, notes, and an appendix on the significance of 'Fashion at Cranford'.Present Appertaining To Books Cranford
| Title | : | Cranford |
| Author | : | Elizabeth Gaskell |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 257 pages |
| Published | : | June 30th 2005 by Penguin Classics (first published June 1853) |
| Categories | : | Classics. Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature. 19th Century. Victorian |
Rating Appertaining To Books Cranford
Ratings: 3.85 From 35322 Users | 2238 ReviewsDiscuss Appertaining To Books Cranford
Delightful! I went into this totally blind, knowing only that it's a respected classic by the author of NORTH AND SOUTH. I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly wasn't expecting this! CRANFORD is all about the village of Cranford, which is mostly inhabited by shabby genteel spinsters and widows. The whole book is a serious of humorous vignettes about life there as related by an outsider, Mary Smith, who frequently goes to stay with her elderly friend Miss Matty. Through the eyes of theI started Cranford in low-expectation mode, as a piece of invalid reading, to read while I was languishing with a bad cold (the literary equivalent of the unalluring bread-jelly that one of the old-biddy protagonists of Elizabeth Gaskells 1853 novel likes to inflict on her ailing neighbours). Cosy is a rather offputting term used in book marketing, so you can have cosy detective novels andmore disturbingly"cosy crime novels and cosy murder mysteries. I had always had the impression that Cranford
What a gorgeous book. After years of avoiding Victorian literature, in the past twelve months I've fallen in love with Gaskell's writing. This is a short work: more a series of episodes than a linear narrative. It centres on the lives of a group of women who dominate society in the small town of Cranford. They are united by being single - widows and spinsters - and by the fact that live in genteel poverty. Cranford is at times laugh-out-loud funny, at times deeply moving. Within five minutes of
3.5 stars, rounded down.Want to take a trip to a small English town in the mid 1800s, meet the people and see what everyday life was like for the female population? Open Cranford and travel in time. It is a sweet and simple book, comprised of what seems more like vignettes than an actual plot line. Nothing exciting happens, life just unfolds, and yet you feel attached to these women, admiring the grace with which they handle their sometimes difficult world, the way they navigate a system that
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
Meh. Having never read Elizabeth Gaskell before, I feel that perhaps this was the wrong book to start with. It seemed like a never ending story about nothing in particular. No real plot and the characters were marginal and annoying.
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
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