First published in 1851 as a serial novel in Household
Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens, Cranford is an engaging experience
in long ago place and time and the lives of simple small town people. Elizabeth Gaskell took a town that she knew
very well – Knutsford in Cheshire – and crafted the fictional town of Cranford
where she recounts episodes from the lives of three primary characters relating
to their neighbors and daily events.
While there may not be an intricate plot nor twists and
turns of suspense and deep drama, we nevertheless are granted a well-crafted
glimpse into another time and another way of life.
Elizabeth Stevenson was born in September of 1810, the
daughter of a Scottish Unitarian minister and the youngest of eight children.
After her father resigned his orders, her life took a more insecure turn as his
employment endeavors re-formed and Elizabeth’s mother died, leading him to send
Elizabeth to live as a dependent with an aunt and grandparents in the small
town of Knutsford, Cheshire.
Elizabeth was sent for a typical “young ladies” education in
the arts, classics and decorum and encouraged by her aunts and by her father to
read, study and to develop in her writing. At 22 years old, she married a Unitarian
minister, William Gaskell, in Knutsford and they went to settle in Manchester
where he served as the minister Cross Street Unitarian Chapel.
The tragic loss of children, places lived; neighbors and
friends experienced… all became fuel for Elizabeth’s imagination as the years
passed. She began with a diary, wrote
poems with her husband under the title - Sketches
Among The Poor - which were published in a magazine and there followed other
small written works which developed her style.
It was after the Gaskells traveled to the continent that
influences produced new ideas and her first work of fiction was published, Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras under the
name “Cotton Mather Mills”.
Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her major literary works in the
second half of the century from a villa at 84 Plymouth Grove in Manchester,
England. Her social circle grew to
include such writers as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, John Ruskin and the American
writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Her last work, Wives
And Daughters, was published as an incomplete work in early 1865, a year
after Gaskell died of a heart attack.
The Jane Austen Tea
Society will begin our second study of British Victorian Authors with this
charming Elizabeth Gaskell work and discuss over a Summer Book Breakfast to
take place on Saturday the 12th of July 2014 at 10am.
There is plenty of
time – start reading!
