Cranford

by Elizabeth Gaskell Narrated by Wanda McCaddon

Overview

Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell's best-known work, is a humorous account of a nineteenth-century English village dominated by a group of genteel but modestly circumstanced women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister, Miss Matty. But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reappearance of long-lost relatives.



By eschewing the conventional marriage plot with its nubile heroines and focusing instead on a group of middle-aged and elderly spinsters, Gaskell does something highly unusual within the novel genre. Through her masterful management of the novel's tone, she underscores the value and dignity of single women's lives even as she causes us to laugh at her characters' foibles. Charles Dickens was the first of many readers to extol its wit and charm, and it has consistently been Gaskell's most popular work.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Elizabeth Langland’s edition of Cranford is likely to introduce a new generation of readers to the pleasures of Gaskell’s most delightful but least immediately appreciated novel. By including in her appendices of historical materials choice selections from conduct books and writings on political and domestic economy, as well as in her informed, accessible introduction, Langland demonstrates that, appearances aside, the world of Cranford is firmly located in its Victorian context and addresses, however obliquely, some of the most intractable problems of its age—and of ours.” — Eileen Gillooly, Columbia University

Eileen Gillooly Columbia University

"Elizabeth Langland's edition of Cranford is likely to introduce a new generation of readers to the pleasures of Gaskell's most delightful but least immediately appreciated novel. By including in her appendices of historical materials choice selections from conduct books and writings on political and domestic economy, as well as in her informed, accessible introduction, Langland demonstrates that, appearances aside, the world of Cranford is firmly located in its Victorian context and addresses, however obliquely, some of the most intractable problems of its age—and of ours."

AUGUST 2008 - AudioFile

Clare Wille’s performance of this gently satirical look at a genteel English village in the first half of the nineteenth century may be the wittiest I’ve ever heard. Like a kinder version of E.F. Benson’s Mapp v. Lucia novels, Gaskell’s ladies of Cranford have their jealousies and their vanities. They also have moments of quiet tragedy (a lost brother, a suitor rejected to please the family but never forgotten) and of high drama. Wille made me laugh aloud at the pompous trumpeting of the late Reverend Jenkins. When Miss Poe comes in out of breath, you could swear Wille was running up stairs while delivering her lines. Her performance is always fully engaged, at one with the story, which is itself a small gem. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170896820
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	09/14/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos