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  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780553212433
  • Imprint: Bantam Dell
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 576
  • RRP: $14.99

Villette




'I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette - There is something preternatural about its power' George Eliot

With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Bronte reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Bronte's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There, she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquetter. This first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journey—a journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.

  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780553212433
  • Imprint: Bantam Dell
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 576
  • RRP: $14.99

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Annals
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About the author

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Bronte was born on 21 April 1816. Her father was curate of Haworth, Yorkshire, and her mother died when she was five years old, leaving five daughters and one son. In 1824 Charlotte, Maria, Elizabeth and Emily were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergymen's daughters, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. The children were taught at home from this point on and together they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Charlotte worked as a teacher from 1835 to 1838 and then as a governess. In 1846, along with Emily and Anne, Charlotte published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.After this Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, Anne wrote Agnes Grey and Charlotte wrote The Professor. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were both published but Charlotte's novel was initially rejected. In 1847 Jane Eyre became her first published novel and met with immediate success. Between 1848 and 1849 Charlotte lost her remaining siblings: Emily, Branwell and Anne. She published Shirley in 1849, Villette in 1853 and in 1854 she married the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died the next year, on 31 March 1855.

Charlotte Bronte was born at Thornton, Yorkshire, in 1816. Her mother died in 1821, and Charlotte, her four sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Anne, and her brother Branwell were left in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Left to pursue their education mainly at home, all the Bronte children became involved in a rich fantasy life and Charlotte and Branwell collaborated in the invention of the imaginary kingdom of Angria. In 1824 Charlotte went with Maria, Elizabeth and Emily to a school for daughters of the clergy; her experiences there are fictionalized in the Lowood section of Jane Eyre (1847; written under the pseudonym of Currer Bell). She wrote three other novels, Shirey (1849) Vilette (1853) and She Professor (published posthumously in 1857). She also made occasional visits to London where she became known to various writers, including William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. In 1854 Charlotte finally overcame her father's objections and married, but unfortunately she was to die in the following year.

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Praise for Villette

Her best novel

Guardian

Anne Tyler is a brilliant writer

Observer

A book to be settled into fully, tomorrow be damned. Funny, heart-hammering, wise.superb

New York Times Book Review

The most impressive American novelist of her generation

Sunday Telegraph

A classic of contemporary Americana.variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving

Los Angeles Times

[It is] Beautiful, funny, real, absorbing - Anne Tyler is the writer who made me want to write.

Nick Hornby, UK Press Syndication

The best of Tyler's many excellent books

Daily Telegraph THE 100 GREATEST NOVELS OF ALL TIME

I do think the world would probably be a better place if everyone read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, but to be honest, anything by Tyler will do. She's such a brilliantly empathetic writer - there's no 'them' and 'us' in Tyler's world - and she often writes from the perspective of the kind of people who you would walk past and barely notice in the street . . . Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a proper family saga filled with beady but compassionate takes on all of the unforgettable characters. Reading Tyler helps people to become better people, and I really fully believe that

Hadley Freeman, Good Housekeeping

Excellently done; the minutiae of domestic landscapes, the lunatic irrationality of family quarrels, the torments of sibling rivalry

Sunday Telegraph

Funny, heart-hammering, wise...superb entertainment

New York Times Book Review

A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life

Anna Chancellor

A classic of contemporary Americana... variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving

Los Angeles Times

A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read

Boston Globe

A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well

Newsweek

In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power

The New Yorker