The Cranford Chronicles

This is a really good edition of the book. If you by classic literature you know that some editions are better than others, this is a very good version of the The Cranford Chronicles. This volume houses Mr. Harrison's Confessions(86 pages), Cranford (188 pages), My Lady Ludlow (203 pages). The type is not ridiculously small it's pretty average, this is a very readable version of the Cranford Chronicles. The story of the town of Cranford and it's inhabitants, the comings and goings, the slow and steady development of the women of Cranford and their coming together.

It is fun to read the book from which the TV miniseries was taken. Seeing the people in print gives more to their on screen characterizations. I think that it is good to have both and to explore more of Gaskell's creations.

This paperback version is the one that the recent tv series fan will want, because unlike some of the other paperback versions, it includes the three Gaskell novellas that were the basis for the Judi Dench-Eileen Atkins miniseries. The three books were "Cranford", "My Lady Ludlow" and "Mr Harrison's Confessions." Mrs Gaskell stories are considered comedies, and this comes clear in the original texts. Some sadness of course in events, but mostly there is a clear comic, even sardonic voice in which we can fall in love with the characters and still laugh at their foibles, fashions, and foolishness which seem still so apropos today. Highly recommended.

I have just discovered this wonderful author after watching "Cranford" on Masterpiece Theatre. I ordered several of her titles and I am hooked. I will read everything she has written. As someone who always wished that Jane Austen had written just one more book (or two or five or forty!!!), Elizabeth Gaskell is a real find. Her works are more "worldly" than the mild Miss Austen, but her characters are just as compelling and I love her.