Cranford is one of the better-known novels of the 19th-century English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published in 1851 as a serial in the magazine Household Words, which was edited by Charles Dickens.

A collection of comic sketches serialized in Charles Dickens's journal Household Words, these stories look to sympathetically portray changing small-town customs and values.Harkening back to memories of her childhood in the small Cheshire town of Knutsford, Cranford is an attempt to portray an affectionate picture of a class and customs already becoming anachronisms