Cranford is one of the better-known novels of the 19th-century English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published, irregularly, in eight instalments, between December 1851 and May 1853, in the magazine Household Words, which was edited by Charles Dickens. It was then published, with minor revision, in book form in 1853.rnThe novel became extremely popular in the years following Elizabeth Gaskell's death. The first installment (in Household Words), which became the novel's first two chapters, was originally published "as a self-contained sketch ", and the" irregular way "the further seven instalments were published suggests that it took Mrs. Gaskell time to think of making this into a book. She was during this period busy writing the three volume novel Ruth, which was published January 1853