Books by Charlotte Brontë
**In time for the 200th anniversary of her birth, a Penguin Hardcover Classics edition of the book many believe to be Charlotte Brontë's crowning achievement.**
With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully moving study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her. Will she or will she not marry him?
<p><i>Shirley</i>, published in 1849, was <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte">Charlotte Brontë’s</a> second novel after <i><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte/jane-eyre">Jane Eyre</a></i>. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features strong pleas for the recognition of women’s intellect and right to their independence of thought and action.</p>
<p>Set in the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Napoleonic period of the early 19th Century, the novel describes the confrontations between textile manufacturers and organized groups of workers protesting the introduction of mechanical looms. Three characters stand out: Robert Moore, a mill-owner determined to introduce modern methods despite sometimes violent opposition; his young cousin Caroline Helstone, who falls deeply in love with Robert; and Shirley Keeldar, a rich heiress who comes to live in the estate of Fieldhead, on whose land Robert’s mill stands. Robert’s business is in trouble, not so much because of the protests of the workers but because of a government decree which prevents him selling his finished cloth overseas during the duration of the war with Napoleon. He receives a loan from Miss Keeldar, and her interest in him seems to be becoming a romantic one, much to the distress of Caroline, who pines away for lack of any sign of affection from Robert.</p>
<p>Shirley Keeldar is a remarkable female character for the time: strong, very independent-minded, dismissive of much of the standard rules of society, and determined to decide on her own future. Interestingly, up to this point, the name “Shirley” was almost entirely a male name; Shirley’s parents had hoped for a boy. Such was the success of Brontë’s novel, however, that it became increasingly popular as a female name and is now almost exclusively so.</p>
<p>Although never as popular or successful as the more classically romantic <i>Jane Eyre</i>, <i>Shirley</i> is nevertheless now highly regarded by critics.</p>
