Cranford Author:Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell There is no ISBN number, no Library of Congress Card number, and no printing date. — Cranford is a unique picture of English village life in the early nineteenth century, written with affection, humor, and an eye for the small details of daily living almost as keen as Jane Austen's. When Charles Dickens asked Mrs. Gaskill in 1850 to contribute t... more »o his magazine, "Household Worlds", she began chronicles of "cranford", a quiet Cheshire village which bore a striking resemblance to Knutsford, where she herself grew up. In 1853 the loosely connected sketches were brought together in a book, and since then the ladies of Cranford with their emphasis on gentility, and the men - kind, bumbling, and dashing - who cross their paths have found a permanent place in English letters.« less