Penguin English Library Cranford - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141199423 ISBN 13: 9780141199429

Publisher: Penguin Classic, 2012

Synopsis

The Penguin English Library Edition of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell 'Just at this moment he passed us on the stairs, making such a graceful bow, in reply to which I dropped a curtsey - all foreigners have such polite manners, one catches something of it' Cranford is an affectionate and often moving portrait of genteel poverty and intertwined lives in a nineteenth-century village. One of Elizabeth Gaskell's most beloved works, it centres on a community dominated by women and governed by old-fashioned ways. The formidable Miss Deborah Jenkyns and the kindly Miss Matty's days revolve around card games, tea, thriftiness and an endless appetite for scandal, until change comes into their world - whether it is the modern ideas of Captain Brown, a bank collapse, rumours of burglars or an unexpected reappearance from the past. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

About this title

Book Description

Originally published as a magazine serial and then printed in novel form in 1853, Cranford is a playful tour of a peculiar country town. From the stately, stern Miss Jenkyns to the timid Miss Betsy Barker and her flannel-wearing cow, the inhabitants are all acquainted, and all poised to overhear scandal.

From the Back Cover

Elizabeth Gaskell’s episodic second novel, sometimes dismissed as nostalgically “charming,” is now considered by many critics to be her most sophisticated work. The country town of Cranford is home to a group of women, affectionately called “Amazons” by the narrator, whose seemingly uneventful lives are full of conflicts, failures, and unexpected connections. A rich commentary on Victorian culture by one of its most astute observers, Cranford owes its enduring popularity to the complex pleasures it offers the reader.

This Broadview Edition provides an assortment of historical materials to put the novel in context, including Gaskell’s letters from the period of the novel’s writing, excerpts from texts read by the characters, illustrations from the novel and from contemporary periodicals, and other Victorian writings on industrialization, etiquette, and domestic life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0141199423
• ISBN 13: 9780141199429
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240