Publisher's Synopsis
Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte's death With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' 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. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a teacher in Brussels, Charlotte Bronte'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.
