‘It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor... I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!’

A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances.

Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed by old-fashioned habits and dominated by friendships between women.

Her wry account of rural life is undercut, however, by tragedy: with such troubling events as Matty’s bankruptcy, the death of Captain Brown and the unwitting cruelty of Peter Jenkyns.