The fictional Cranford is based on the small Cheshire town of Knutsford in which Elizabeth Gaskell grew up. She had already drawn on her childhood memories for an article published in America, "The Last Generation in England" (1849), and for the town of Duncombe which featured in her extended story "Mr. Harrison's Confessions" (1851). These accounts of life in a country town and the old-fashioned class snobbery prevailing there were carried over into what was originally intended simply as another story, published as "Our Society in Cranford" in the magazine Household Words in December 1851. Seeing the possibilities of a longer work in the piece, which eventually formed the first two chapters of her novel, Charles Dickens, the magazine's editor, encouraged the author to write more episodes.[1]
Thereafter Mrs Gaskell added seven more episodes over the next 18 months, with an eight-month gap between the sections ending at what is now chapter 8 (written between December 1851 and April 1852) and the later sections (written between January and May 1853).[2] During this period, she was also engaged in writing the three-volume novel Ruth, which was published in January 1853.[3] Cranford soon followed its serialisation as a volume published by Chapman & Hall in June 1853, with a second printing in August and a US edition that month. Following a third UK printing in 1855 came a French translation in 1856 and a German translation in 1867. The book was not widely reviewed in Britain and it was not until the 1890s that it became really popular.[4]
One of the routes to the novel's growth in popularity was the policy of publishers to increase sales by providing lower-priced illustrated editions. The first of these in Cranford's case was issued by Smith, Elder & Co in 1864 with illustrations by George du Maurier, whose approach was to interpret scenes in contemporary terms. There was a change of emphasis in Hugh Thomson's 1891 illustrations, where the Cranford interiors and styles of dress are pictured as closer to the pre-industrial Regency period of Elizabeth Gaskell's memories. There was also an emotional shift from Du Maurier's psychological but compassionate depiction of people in limited circumstances to a greater emphasis on humour and sentimentality, a change of approach which was to prove influential on other illustrators for decades to come.[5]
