Villette

Written by Charlotte Brontë

Narrated by Karen Cass

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls's boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, a headmistress who spies on her staff, and her own complex feelings – first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Villette, Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel, is a powerfully moving look at isolation and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isis Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9780753130025

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was an English novelist and poet, and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters. Her experiences in boarding schools, as a governess and a teacher eventually became the basis of her novels. Under pseudonyms the sisters published their first novels; Charlotte's first published novel, Jane Eyre(1847), written under a non de plume, was an immediate literary success. During the writing of her second novel all of her siblings died. With the publication of Shirley (1849) her true identity as an author was revealed. She completed three novels in her lifetime and over 200 poems.