Mr. Harrison's Confessions
Author: first_name:  Elizabeth Cleghorn
last_name: Gaskell
Language: English
Year: 1849

It is asserted that the inspiration for Elizabeth Gaskell's  marvellous stories of Cranford was her childhood home of Knutsford, a small town in Cheshire and to where she returned for a while as a young woman. This assertion is born out by an essay she wrote in 1849 entitled The Last Generation in England, in which she writes about "The town in which I once resided ...". There can be little doubt when reading this that it provided her with the template for Cranford.<br><br>In 1851 the year she b