This is a rare edition of Cranford by Mrs. Gaskell, with a preface by Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Published by the Frederick A. Stokes Company in London, there is no specific date of publication, though I would estimate that due to the inclusion of a preface that references several of Gaskell’s later works, it was published around 1890. The call number for the book is X 823 G248c, found in the rare books collection at the Armstrong Browning Library.
In her preface, Ritchie makes various connections to literary works by Gaskell herself and to other authors such as Charlotte Brontë and Voltaire. However, she spends the most space on her comparison of the old women of Cranford with the young women of Jane Austen’s novels, particularly in their experiences of love. As seen in some of the photos included with this entry, Ritchie believes that in Cranford, despite the fact that “love is a memory rather than a present emotion…but there is more real feeling these few signs of what was once, than is all the Misses Bennet’s youthful romances put together.” This attribution of emotional depth to spinsters marks a fundamental shift in representations of womanhood following Cranford’s publication.
