Every few weeks I need to take a break from the 20th century and dive into a book that's a bit older. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that the way I got into Elizabeth Gaskell was via Masterpiece Classic trailers that play before my favorite Jane Austen adaptations (the new 'Emma' is especially good). 'Cranford' is basically Golden Girls in the Victorian era. A group of spinsters (apologies for using that word but I couldn't think of another) and widows has minor misadventures in a small English town called Cranford in the shadow of the newly arriving railroad system. They drink a lot of tea, they gossip quite a bit, and are extraordinarily judgmental, but it is so funny and sweet.

Elizabeth Gaskell was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and he was understandably a huge admirer of and advocate for her work, although his novels have always overshadowed hers, even the so-so ones. They definitely are similar, but Cranford has fewer angelic orphans and evil businessmen; in fact children and men are pretty absent, as most of the women who are the central characters never married. There is something very satisfying about reading about a group of women whose lives and happiness are not defined by motherhood/marriage, and most of them regard marriage as a plight they happily escaped. It's a very cozy little book and you'll find yourself wanting to disappear into their insular little world, threatened as it is by the impending Industrial Revolution.

As to be expected from Masterpiece Classic, the adaptation of 'Cranford' is really terrific, although it somewhat surprisingly departs from the book, probably to give the mini-series more of an actual plot (the book is quite anecdotal), and to shift the focus a bit to the younger characters and their romances (boring!). There is a follow-up called 'Return to Cranford' which I hope is just more of the same because this is the type of thing I just can't get enough of (see also: everything Jane Austen, most of Charles Dickens, some Anne of Green Gables).