Publisher's Synopsis
The 1849 novel, Shirley, written by Charlotte Bronte under the pseudonym Currer Bell, is responsible for the name Shirley changing from almost an exclusively male name to an almost exclusively female name. The main character is a girl, but she was born into a wealthy family and her father gave her a boy's name because he wanted a son. Charlotte Bronte wrote Shirley after she published her possibly best-known work, Jane Eyre. She wanted to write something different, and Shirley is the result: a social novel that contrasts two female heroines, Shirley and Caroline, to explore what a woman's life would be like if freed from the restrictive social conventions of the time by independent wealth.
