HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'"I'll not listen to reason," she said, now in full possession of her voice, which had been rather choked with sobbing. "Reason always means what someone else has got to say."'

First published in serial format in a magazine, Gaskell's Cranford is a delightfully light-hearted series of stories about early Victorian life in a country village.

Following the lives of two spinster sisters, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah as they gossip about the inconsequential goings-on of the community around them, Gaskell's best-loved work affectionately comments on the role of women in society at that time and the changing face of the Victorian world.