Cranford & Other Stories

These tales move from the gentle comedy of a small English country town in Dr. Harrison's Confessions to atmospheric horror in far north-west Wales with The Doom of the Griffiths. The story of Cousin Phillis, her masterly tale of love and loss, is a subtle, complex and perceptive analysis of changes in English national life during an industrial age, while the gripping Lois the Witch recreates the terrors of the Salem witchcrafttrials in seventeenth century New England as Gaskell shrewdly shows the numerous of this furious outbreak of delusion. Whimsically modified fairy tales are set in a French chateau, while an engaging love story poetically evokes a peasant life in wine-growing Germany.