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.