"My Lady Ludlow" expands on material found in "Cranford". In the most predominant part of the story Lady Ludlow now explains her reasons for believing that reading is a detriment and hazard. Gaskell uses a story within the story to dramatically illustrate Lady Ludlow’s reasoning. After reading "Lady Ludlow" and looking back to "Cranford, the reader has a much clearer understanding of why she feels justified in holding this opinion.

"Mr. Harrison’s Confessions" is based on the same character as Dr. Harrison in "Cranford". Gaskell delightfully expands on his background and particularly adds to the episode concerning the Valentines and misapprehensions of various ladies of Duncombe as to his true intentions. This treatment makes the story much more comical and Mr. Harrison’s predicament exceedingly more dire.

This volume also includes several other short stories infrequently seen in recent editions. Among them, "The Accursed Race", "The Half-Brothers" and "The Doom of the Griffiths" illustrate the author’s skill in dealing with tragic characters in a significantly darker mood than seen in her better-known works.

An Appendix of brief transitions to the stories is included in the publication. These transitions were published with the original "Around the Sofa" edition published in 1859 that included all of these stories with the exception of "Mr. Harrison’s Confessions". They use new characters to illustrate the telling of the stories literally “around the sofa”.