Honestly a delightful little look at a village in the 19th century. Extremely witty and led by women, their love for one another, and their town. Good, quaint escapism.

I listened to this book and giggled my way through it. Absolutely delightful, only it was too short! 😉

Really: just fun. Poking at the foibles and endearing characters. Some really beautiful passages. I laughed out loud and fell in love and felt for strained relationships and triumphed at reunifications. I enjoyed it so much.

"But to return to Miss Matty. It was really very pleasant to see how her unselfishness and simple sense of justice called out the same good qualities in others. She never seemed to think any one would impose upon her, because she should be so grieved to do it to them."

Matty is wonderful. She's not really good at anything in particular but loving and caring. And that ends up meaning more than she could imagine.

I completely fell for Mr. Holbrook. https://ladydusk.com/wednesdays-with-words-extravagance/

This is just the type of entertainment I love. Sweet friends, mild tragedies, tea, not a lot of drama.

This was a joy to read. So heartwarming and full of really clever wit.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is a novel about steadfastly unconventional women living in a mid-19th century village. Gaskell’s stories are told in vignette form without any A-Z plotline. These are a series of anecdotes similar to news and gossip one would relate to one’s best friends in a weekly catch-up session.

This novel is told through the outsider’s viewpoint of Mary Smith, a thirtyish singleton who is a friend of the Jenkyns’s family. This novel centers around the widows and spinsters of the town and their enduring friendships, well-intentioned interferences, kindhearted gestures, and their strict adherence to morals and established routines.

Cranford detailed the various levels of socioeconomic status in the village. The novel spanned a period from the 1830s to 1850s. We see our main character, Matty Jenkyns, reduced from a genteel penny pincher to respectable poor, saved from the outer fringes of poverty by the secret machinations of her comrades and townsfolk who loved her.

I have read many classics set around the time that Cranford was written but for some reason I found it much easier to read Austen, Bronte, and Dickens than Gaskell. Cranford was difficult to get into because of the continual references to people, places, events, and items of which I had no knowledge. To compound this matter, the formatting of the book was difficult as well. One paragraph often ended up being an entire page or almost an entire page. The line spacing between sentences and paragraphs was minimal and the indentations were so tiny it was hard to see where one paragraph ended and the next one began.

However, these were small gripes indeed. I got into a reading rhythm at about page 50 and then I started to really appreciate the book for what it was. Give this one a try!