Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Treasured household names, including Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Imelda Staunton and Julia McKenzie, brought Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford to life in one of the best-loved classic dramas of all time. This celebratory omnibus edition includes the classic novel of the same name, a comic portrait of the lives of Cranford's genteel female inhabitants, as well as a novella and a short story. Both of these, The Moorland Cottage and The Cage at Cranford, feature in the Cranford two-part Special due to be screened on BBC television over Christmas 2009. These poignant portraits of early Victorian country village life deserve to be read and re-read.