Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Imagine a novel without a plot.  Imagine a novel without a plot that happens to be a great pleasure to read.  Then you have imagined Cranford.

The genesis of this novel resulted from Charles Dickens inviting Mrs Gaskell to contribute short stories to his periodical Household Words.  Over the course of three years she provided Dickens with a series of eight stand-alone short stories featuring the village of Cranford and its inhabitants.  It was only afterwards that any thought was given to reworking these stories into its current form as a novel (this would explain the apparent lack of a plot) which was first published in 1851. 

What we do have is a collection of charming and loosely-linked vignettes about the ladies of Cranford as told by the narrator Mary Smith.  The story is set in the 1830s.  We are introduced to the central characters:  Miss Matty Jenkyns and Miss Pole, two aging spinsters; the Honourable Mrs Jamieson an aged and sleepy widow; and Mary Smith who divides her time between the village of Drumble where she lives with her father, and Cranford when she visits Miss Matty for extended periods.  Although the book starts out by asserting that the women of Cranford are Amazons, male characters do feature in the stories - ironically as stalwarts or saviours.

Thematically, Cranford deals with the vanishing way of life that was the English rural village.  By the time of the novel's first publication, industrialisation was well under way in Britain and there was an increasing migration of the population from the countryside to urban centres.  

It is a testament to Mrs Gaskell's skill as a writer that she is able to produce a loving portrait of English village life while avoiding the excesses of sentimentality and wistfulness.  Subtle, gentle and easy to enjoy: give Cranford a whirl.