Cranford 1851

by Elizabeth Gaskell, Patricia Ingham (Other), Patricia Ingham (Noted by), Coralie Bickford-Smith (Illustrator)

Overview

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Gaskell's best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by 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 reapparance of long-lost relatives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141442549
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/27/2009
Series:	Penguin Clothbound Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	118,160
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. she is the General Editor of all Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

Table of Contents

I	Our Society	1
II	The Captain	9
III	A Love Affair of Long Ago	20
IV	A Visit to an Old Bachelor	26
V	Old Letters	35
VI	Poor Peter	43
VII	Visiting	52
VIII	"Your Ladyship"	59
IX	Signor Brunoni	69
X	The Panic	76
XI	Samuel Brown	87
XII	Engaged to Be Married	95
XIII	Stopped Payment	101
XIV	Friends in Need	110
XV	A Happy Return	123
XVI	Peace to Cranford	132

Editorial Reviews

The elderly spinster ladies of the village of Cranford pinch pennies while maintaining the standards of behavior suitable for the upper class. Mary Smith, a frequent visitor to Cranford, tells us of the ladies’ trials, which range from the trivial—matching the right bonnet to the appropriate occasion—to the momentous—the bank collapse that leaves Miss Matty destitute. Prunella Scales employs a gentle tone that encapsulates the genteel poverty and sympathetic humor of the novel. Miss Matty is endearing and eccentric with her proper manner, her discombobulation when she meets an admirer from long ago, and her determination to repay debts by going into the business of selling tea. In addition to her portrayals of the ladies, Scales’s interpretation of Martha, Miss Matty’s fiercely loyal servant, makes it clear that she can voice a woman of any class. A.B. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2010 - AudioFile