Be the first to comment on this book.
A new edition of Charlotte Brontë's 1849 classic novel, Shirley, her follow-up novel to her bestseller Jane Eyre. The novel itself is set in depression-wracked Yorkshire during the Luddite uprisings of 1811-1812 and follows the complicated relationship between two friends -- Caroline, a poor and shy young woman with poor prospects, and Shirley, an independent heiress who defies society's expectations -- and their romantic adventures and rivalries amid a world of significant economic and social upheaval. Charlotte Brontë, in her later years, confide that the character of Shirley was modeled after who she imagined her sister Emily would have been had she had greater wealth and lived a longer life.Shirley was the novel Charlotte was working on when all three of her literary siblings -- Anne, Emily, and her brother Bramwell -- fell ill and died in 1848-1849. Some scholars speculate that certain aspects of the novel were colored by these losses and perhaps reflect Charlotte's way of coping with those tragedies.Charlotte Brontê (1816-1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the famed Brontë sisters whose novels are considered to be classics of English literature. Originally employed as a governess, Charlotte and her sisters turned to writing, using the pseudonyms Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell to publish collections of their poetry in 1846. Although her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers (it was later published posthumously in 1857), her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847 to great public acclaim. In 1848, Charlotte begun work on her next novel, Shirley, before tragedy befell her family and she temporarily put aside writing – her brother, Branwell, dying in September of 1848, her sister Emily in December of 1848, and Anne finally in May 1849. Eventually returning to writing to deal with her grief, Shirley was published in October 1849. This was followed by Villette in 1853. She died in 1855 at age 39 due to complications from pregnancy, the last of her siblings to die. Charlotte Brontë is considered to be one of the most significant and greatest English language novelists of the 19th century, and her masterpiece Jane Eyrecontinues to be ranked among the finest and most beloved novels in the English language, the subject to countless highly successful TV and film adaptations.
