Shirley and The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

Shirley and The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

These two classic novels, together with Bront 's well-known Jane Eyre and Villette, comprise a magnificent oeuvre, each one a singular achievement of characterization, human understanding, and narrative elegance and drama.

Shirley is the story of a complicated friendship between two very different women: shy and socially constrained Caroline, the poor niece of a tyrannical clergyman; and the independent heiress Shirley, who has both the resources and the spirit to defy convention. The romantic entanglements of the two women with a local mill owner and his penniless brother pit the claims of passion against the boundaries of class and society.

The Professor--the first novel Bront completed, the last to be published--is both a disturbing love story and the coming-of-age tale of a self-made man. At its center is William Crimsworth, who has come to Brussels to work as an instructor in a school for girls. When he becomes entangled with Zor ide Reuter, a charismatic and brilliantly intellectual woman, the fervor of her feelings threatens both her own engagement and William's chance of finding true love.

Charlotte Bronte lived from 1816 to 1855. In 1824 she was sent away to school with her four sisters and they were treated so badly that their father brought them home to Haworth in Yorkshire. The elder two sisters died within a few days and Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne were brought up in the isolated village. They were often lonely and loved to walk on the moors. They were all great readers and soon began to write small pieces of verse and stories.

Once Charlotte's informal education was over she began to work as a governess and teacher in Yorkshire and Belgium so that she could add to the low family income and help to pay for her brother Branwell's art education. Charlotte was a rather nervous young woman and didn't like to be away from home for too long. The sisters began to write more seriously and published poetry in 1846 under male pen names - there was a lot of prejudice against women writers. The book was not a success and the sisters all moved on to write novels. Charlotte's best-known book, Jane Eyre, appeared in 1847 and was soon seen as a work of genius. Charlotte really knew how to make characters and situations come alive.

Charlotte's life was full of tragedy, never more so than when her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne died within a few months in 1848/49. She married her father's curate in 1854 but died in 1855, before her fortieth birthday.

Helen M. Cooper is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307268211
ISBN 10	0307268217
Title	Shirley and The Professor
Author	Charlotte Bronte
Series	Everyman's Library Classics Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2008-05-20
Number of pages	952
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.