Shirley (Penguin Popular Classics) - Softcover

Bronte, Charlotte

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140620230 ISBN 13: 9780140620238

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

Synopsis

Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. London, Penguin Books, 1994. 11 x 18cm. (6), 666 pages. Original softcover. Excellent condition, as new. [Penguin Popular Classics]. As many critics have noted, Shirley has a number of different plot strands, loosely drawn together. It can be read as a romantic tale, as sociological comment on the question of womens' lives or as a history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire. Contemporary critics found Shirley (1849) inferior to Jane Eyre. However, recent criticism has discovered in Shirley a significant condition-of-England theme as well as a clearly feminist discourse. Patricia Ingham, for instance, considers Shirley an industrial novel that successfully tackles both gender and class issues during the Industrial Revolution in England. Shirley was published at the end of the "Hungry Forties," a decade of profound social unrest. The novel has a complex plot: an unromantic tale with two interpolated social commentaries: on the history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire, and on the struggle for female independence from male dominance in patriarchal society. [From Victorian Web]

About this title

From the Back Cover

Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Bronte vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning". Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention. A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Bronte's literary talent.

About the Author

Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140620230
• ISBN 13: 9780140620238
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 672