![]() ![]() ![]() I don’t mean to say that Mary Smith the narrator is Mrs Gaskell, just that the setting and times were well known to her. Queen Adelaide is mentioned which would make it 1831-37. Gaskell’s narrator is a youngish single woman, and the period is some time after the end of the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815). The book overall is reminiscent of Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (1836) in its loosely connected stories and the gentle wit of its narrator. The sketches, published between 18 in Charles Dickens’ magazine Household Words, were not originally conceived as a novel and in fact Gaskell was at that time concentrating on Ruth (1853) a much more important though probably less popular work. ![]() Gaskell (1810-1865) had spent some of her childhood and where she returned, in 1832, on marrying the local Unitarian minister, though they soon moved to Manchester. Cranford (1853) was first published as a series of sketches of life in Knutsford near Manchester (fictionalised respectively as’Cranford’ and ‘Drumble’), where Eliz. ![]()
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