Description:
A charming Victorian novel of village life, beautifully illustrated with over 80 drawings by Hugh Thomson.
Review Quotes:
"Cranford (1851-53) was reputedly the only one of her own books that Elizabeth Gaskell could re-read, and for more than 150 years, readers, teachers, and dramatists on both sides of the Atlantic have resoundingly echoed her enthusiasm for it."
-Thomas Recchio. Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford: A Publishing History. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009.
"The subversive quality of the novel works on at least three levels. First, it breaks the conventional patterns of family and community and describes women bonding together in ways outside nineteenth-century patriarchal structures. Second, the novel reveals an intriguing degree of gender ambivalence. Third, its structure offers a distinct feminine literary perspective that provides an escape from the patriarchal poetics of the century."
- Kuryllo, Helen. "'A WOMAN'S TEXT IN THE WILD ZONE: ' THE SUBVERSIVENESS OF ELIZABETH GASKELL'S CRANFORD." Utopian Studies, no. 2 (1989): 102-8. http: //www.jstor.org/stable/20718911.