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 the title 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, as well as the old-fashioned class snobbery that prevailed, were carried over into what was originally intended to be just another story and were published as "Our Society in Cranford" in the magazine Household Words in December 1851.