Cranford

Cranford, the most famous novel by the celebrated 19th-century English writer Elizabeth Gaskell, was first published in instalments in the English magazine Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens, in 1851. Now, for the very first time, it is available to you in Czech translation. The author based the fictitious town of Cranford on Knutsford in Cheshire, where she spent a significant part of her childhood.

The novel's plot is a series of whimsical episodes from the life of Mary Smith and her friends, the spinster sisters Matty and Deborah Jenkyns. The scene is populated with humorously drawn characters – to name but a few: Miss Betty Barker, who loves her cow as if it were her daughter; the venerable yet lethargic Mrs Jamieson; the distinctive ladies Miss Pole and Mrs Forrester; Thomas Holbrook, Miss Matty's admirer, who dies some time after his trip to Paris, which public opinion nevertheless insists was the cause of his demise; Mrs Jamieson's dubious butler, Mr Mulliner; the travelling magician Signor Brunoni; and Peter Jenkyns, the long-mourned brother of the Jenkyns sisters, whose return from India turns the town upside down.

Cranford is not only a book that has been loved by countless generations, but it is also a popular subject for film and television adaptations – for example, the excellently cast BBC series Cranford and Return to Cranford were broadcast by Czech Television in 2010.