THE books of Mrs. Gaskell are not so much road now as they used to be, but a generation ago her name ranked with those of the high priests of fiction—Dickens and Thackeray, and Trollope and Charles Reade. There has been a revival of interest in her recently, and ' Cranford,' in particular, is coming into its own again as a classic description of life in an English country town in the middle of last century. It was first published in 1853.