Charlotte Brontë

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt where she endures loneliness and cruelty and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer Rochester the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him and live with the consequences or follow her convictions even if it means leaving the man she loves?

Unpublished at the time of her death, 'The Professor' is the first novel written by Charlotte Brontë, and the seed of her later books, 'Jane Eyre' (7377) and 'Villette' (8644). Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, Brontë's hero escapes from a humiliating clerkship in a Yorkshire mill to find work as a teacher in Belgium, where he falls in love with an impoverished student-teacher.

Set in a chaotic time in England, during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Caroline Helstone’s world is turned upside down when she meets the vivacious Shirley Keeldar. Shirley becomes a beacon of light for Caroline as the two become close friends. However, Caroline is soon shocked to discover that Shirley has won the affections of Robert Moore, the impoverished mill owner whom she loves. Fully representative of Yorkshire life at the time, Brontë’s second novel is completely gripping, unrelenting and utterly wrenching in its portrayal of steadfast love.

Lucy Snowe has neither friends nor family in England so sails to France to teach in a girls’ boarding school in the small town of Villette. She is determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances. Charlotte Bronte draws heavily on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels.