She won instant recognition with her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), which shocked readers with its revelations about the grim living conditions of Manchester factory workers and antagonized some influential critics because of its open sympathy for the workers in their relations with the masters; but the high quality of the writing and the characterization were undeniable. (Its accuracy as social observation has been compared to the work of Friedrich Engels and other contemporaries by critics such as John Lucas.) At the same time it presented a new world, the world of Lancashire factory people, making them the main characters and using their dialect (judiciously modified) for the dialogue. In so doing Mrs. Gaskell, with the Bronte's, opened a path for George Eliot and later novelists. Yet her next success was with Cranford, stories that drew on memories of her childhood in the small Cheshire town of Knutsford to present an affectionate picture of a class and customs already becoming anachronisms. Cranford has charm, humor, and pathos without sentimentality, and no purpose other than to present and regret the passing of a community whose values are worth recalling.
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