Cranford / Cousin Phillis

First published in serial form in Dickens's Household Worlds, Cranford was to achieve immense popularity as a piece of 'exquisite social painting' - 'delightful", tender' and 'delicate.

However, while its charm is undeniable, it is also a book of the most profound sensitivity, at times painfully moving, written in tones of affectionate irony and understatement. Its analysis of an early Victorian country town, captured at the crucial moment of transition in English society, besieged by forces it is incapable of understanding or, ultimately, withstanding, is sharply observed and acutely penetrating.

Like Cranford, the nouvelle Cousin Phillis is concerned with 'phases of society' - the old values as against the new. Presented as a remembered episode, a fleeting, unfulfilled love affair, it represents Mrs Gaskell's most mature work as an imaginative writer.