Charles Dickens’ magazine 
Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The structureless nature of the stories, and the fact that 
Gaskell was busy writing her novel 
Ruth at the time the 
Cranford shorts were being published, suggests that she didn’t initially plan for 
Cranford to be a cohesive novel.
			
The short vignettes follow the activities of the society in the fictional small English country town of Cranford. Gaskell drew from her own childhood in Knutsford to imbue her settings and characters with a nostalgic quality in a time when the societies..." data-title="Книга Cranford">