Still, she does a fine job here, and never more so than with the slyly funny Austenian lines.Grady had asked the question three times, and Sophie still didn’t have an answer. I’ve always enjoyed Prunella Scales, but I fear I was distracted from her fine reading by that same disjointed feeling (she seems to be getting it…why can’t I?). This lets her (and us) simultaneously laugh at and empathize with the Cranford ladies as they struggle to maintain social standards in the face of railroads and other social upheavals (like marriage).

Gaskell plays an Austenian trick-bringing us to the point of disliking a character thoroughly, then shaming us by showing how we’ve misjudged them-several times. The parallels to Austen go beyond mere setting and cast. But no, preoccupied with another three-volume project, it’s generally admitted now that Mrs. Finding it a tad disjointed at the start, as things proceeded, I feared I was the disjointed one. I listened, unaware of this book’s odd pedigree: a village character sketch that somehow grew into a sort-of novel. Julian Barnes’ The Lemon Table and Anne Fine’s Charm School are among the many audiobooks Prunella Scales has narrated. More recent appearances have included the mini-series The Shell Seekers (2006), a production of Carrie's War at the Apollo Theatre (2009) and Horrid Henry: The Movie (2013).

She was awarded the CBE for her services to drama in 1992 and the Patricia Rothermere Award for her contributions to British Theatre in 2001. Her film appearances have included Stiff Upper Lips (1997), Howards End (1992) and Wolf (1994). Prunella Scales is a classically trained stage actress but is best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers (1975-1979) and for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution (1991), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA. She was also friends with Charlotte Brontë and after her death, her father, Patrick Brontë, chose Gaskell to write The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Gaskell was an accomplished writer who had many of her stories published in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words. Her wry account of rural life is undercut, however, by tragedy: with such troubling events as Matty's bankruptcy, the death of Captain Brown and the unwitting cruelty of Peter Jenkyns. Through a series of satirical vignettes, Gaskell sympathetically portrays changing small town customs and values in mid-Victorian England, in a community governed by old-fashioned habits and dominated by friendships between women. A vivid and affectionate portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid-19th century, Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women, relating the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances.

Cranford mrs gaskell