Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the episodic novel Cranford. It first appeared in the magazine Household Words in installments before being published as a book with minor revisions under Cranford in 1853. The work gradually gained popularity, and by the turn of the twentieth century, it had received a number of dramatic adaptations for the stage, radio, and television. The fictional town of Cranford is based on Elizabeth Gaskell's hometown of Knutsford in Cheshire. She had already drawn on her childhood memories for an article published in America, "The Last Generation in England" (1849), as well as the town of Duncombe, which featured in her extended story "Mr. Harrison's Confessions" (1851). These accounts of life in a country town and the old-fashioned class snobbery that prevailed were carried over into what was initially intended to be just another story and were published as "Our Society in Cranford" in the magazine Household Words in December 1851.

1946, the novel was adapted for NBC radio in the United States. Martyn Coleman's three-act stage play, first performed in 1951, was adapted for British television that same year. Following that, the BBC broadcast a four-part television adaptation of the novel in 1972. In 1975, a British musical based on the book went on stage, and Thames Television broadcast another in 1976. Cranford, a five-part television series aired in 2007, was merged with three other works by Gaskell: My Lady Ludlow, Mr. Harrison's Confessions, and The Last Generation in England. Return to Cranford, a sequel, aired in the UK in 2009 and the US in 2010.