Two Everyman Classic in One Volume.
In the predominantly-female community of Cranford, the dress is the most proper (of the previous century), the manners are prescribed (no visit should last more than fifteen minutes) and the bread-and-butter sandwiches are wafer thin (as a tribute to elegant economy). The good ladies cling stubbornly to their rightful places in the village hierarchy and to their virtuous positions as arbiters of Cranford decorum. 'The Cage at Cranford' is a nostalgic coda to the novel, at last, lighthearted look at Mrs Gaskell's endearing Cranfordians.
In 'Mr Harrison's Confessions', a young surgeon arriving at the village of Duncombe confronts a most perplexing illness: his female patients seem to require a singular remedy - marriage to the new doctor.
Elizabeth Gaskell's commentaries on social artifice and petty prejudice are comic but compassionate observations of the English village and its genteel inhabitants who are firmly entrenched in a receding era while a new age presents its visiting card.
The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, notes, selected criticism, text summary and chronology of Elizabeth Gaskell's life and times.
