Cranford is a humorous account of a nineteenth-century English village dominated by a group of genteel but modestly circumstanced women. By eschewing the conventional marriage plot with its nubile heroines and focusing instead on a group of middle-aged and elderly spinsters, Elizabeth Gaskell did something highly unusual within the novel genre. Through her masterful management of the novels tone, she underscores the value and dignity of single womens lives even as she causes us to laugh at her characters foibles. Charles Dickens was the first of many readers to extol its wit and charm, and it has consistently been Gaskells most popular work.