Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of
houses, above a certain rent, are women.

Elizabeth Gaskells comic portrait of early Victorian life in a country town
describes with poignant wit the uneventful lives of its lady-like inhabitants,
offering an ironic commentary on the separate spheres and diverse experiences
of men and women. As the external world necessarily impinges even on Cranford,
the unlikely juxtapositions of old and new brought about by the pace of change
are also explored: the effects of Victorian commerce and imperial expansion co-exist
with the survival of customs and habits of thought from much earlier times.

This critically up-to-date edition includes Gaskells essay The Last Generation
in England containing reminiscences of her childhood in Knutsford, and the comic
story The Cage at Cranford as well as a lucid new introduction that discusses the
originality and subtlety of Gaskells portrayal of womens experience.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), novelist and biographer, was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in London. She was reared by an aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, which became the model for village settings in her novels. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister. Her first novel, Mary Barton, published in 1848, was immensely popular and brought her to the attention of Charles Dickens, who solicited her work for his periodical, Household Words, for which she wrote the series subsequently reprinted as Cranford. She wrote novels, short stories, and a biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Nadia May has been nominated as an AudioFile Golden Voice five years running and is a winner of thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. She is the co-founder of TheatreFirst, a theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area where she currently lives.