Villette

"Villette /viːˈlɛt/ is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance.Villette was Charlotte Brontë's third and last novel; it was preceded by The Professor (her posthumously published first novel, of which Villette is a reworking), Jane Eyre, and Shirley."

This ebook contains links to a FREE AUDIOBOOK that can be downloaded to your device! "Villette"! "Villette"! Have you read it? exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë's final novel appeared in 1853. "It is a still more wonderful book than "Jane Eyre". There is something almost preternatural in its power." Arguably Brontë's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe, the narrator of Villette,flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital of Villette. Soon Lucy's struggle for independence is overshadowed by both her friendship with a worldly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Brontë's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

When a family catastrophe strikes, Lucy Snowe leaves England to teach English in a small Belgian town. Immediately after arriving in Villette, Lucy is drawn into the town’s charm, adventure, and romance. Brontë’s characteristic episodes of social challenges, meticulous creation of intimacy, and realism make ‘Villette’ a wonderfully passionate and psychological novel. Charlotte Brontë’s unromantic view on the world around her, and her outspoken opinions make this novel perfect for fans of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Miss Dalloway’. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was the eldest of the Brontë sisters, born to a family of six children. Her childhood was defined by difficulties at school, and she became a governess for her younger sisters at age 14. She was catapulted onto the literary main stage by her signature realistic, pragmatic, and unromantic commentaries on the state of the world around her in her novel Jane Eyre, which has been successfully adapted to film many times. Her other notable works include ‘Shirley’, ‘The Professor’, and ‘Villette’.

Acclaimed by Virginia Woolf as "Brontë's finest novel," this moving psychological study features a remarkably modern heroine who abandons her native England for a new life as a schoolteacher in Belgium.