Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford was originally published in eight irregular installments of the magazine Household Words from 1851 to 1853 (the magazine was edited at the time by famed author Charles Dickens). Finally, it was published as a complete novel in 1853.
Interestingly, Cranford has no discernible plot that gels all of the chapters together. Instead, Cranford is filled with a number of satirical sketches, the majority of which cover life -- and how it was changing -- in Victorian-era England. Above all, though, Gaskell is trying to breathe some life in a group of people who were quickly becoming anachronisms. She wants them to be known as people -- not relics of the past.
Upon release, Cranford was liked by readers but not widely read. In the present day, readers like the novel reasonably well (for example, users on Amazon gave the book a solid rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars). One reviewer thought the book was solid, albeit unspectacular, writing the following: "All in all, this is a complete, if sometimes uninteresting, examination of the domestic life of 19th-century English women." Interestingly, Cranford became tremendously popular after Gaskell died in November of 1865. In the present day, it was adapted three times by the BBC into a television series, once in 1951, the second in 1972, and the third in 2007. The sequel to the 2007 version -- entitled Return to Cranford -- was released in 2009.
