Cranford Abbey is based on Yolen's scholarship and schooling. The Latin, she says, comes from her high school Latin teacher.

The canonical hours that appear in the story probably come from her extensive research not only into history but into religious practices. The abbey has a problem; it needs money. The new abbot, Aelian, has a solution to the problem: the selling of cider made from the golden apples of the trees in Cranford Abbey's orchard. This solution has another problem: the annual migration of unicorns that stop in the orchard to eat the apples, something they have been doing unmolested for many years. Thus the setting is a mix of a realistic abbey and a magical landscape in which unicorns exist, as well dragons and other beasts and bold, courageous heroes.