Villette (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charlotte Bronte [1]
Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town, by her own flambeaux, beholds her own splendour—gay dresses, grand equipages, fine horses and gallant riders throng the bright streets. (page 509)
Man cannot prophecy. Love is no oracle. Fear sometimes imagines a vain thing. (page 552)
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Villette was first published in three volumes in 1853.
Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Laura Engel.
Note on Charlotte Brontë, The World of Charlotte Brontë and Villette, Inspired by Villette, and Comments & Questions Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
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Villette
ISBN 1-59308-316-5
eISBN : 978-1-411-43342-7
LC Control Number 2004111989
Produced and published in conjunction with: Fine Creative Media, Inc. 322 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10001
Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
QM
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FIRST PRINTING
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë was born on April 21, 1816, in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England, the third child of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. In 1820 the family moved to neighboring Haworth, where Reverend Brontë was offered a lifetime curacy. The following year Mrs. Brontë died of cancer, and her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved in to help raise the six children. The four eldest sisters—Charlotte, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth—attended Cowan Bridge School, until Maria and Elizabeth contracted what was probably tuberculosis and died within months of each other, at which point Charlotte and Emily returned home. The four remaining siblings—Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne—played on the Yorkshire moors and dreamed up fanciful, fabled worlds, creating a constant stream of tales, such as the “Young Men” plays (1826) and “Our Fellows” (1827).
Reverend Brontë kept his children abreast of current events; among these were the 1829 parliamentary debates centering on the Catholic Question, in which the Duke of Wellington was a leading voice. Charlotte’s awareness of politics filtered into her fictional creations, as in the siblings’ saga The Islanders (1827), about an imaginary world peopled with the Brontë children’s real-life heroes, in which Wellington plays a central role as Charlotte’s chosen character.
Throughout her childhood, Charlotte had access to the circulating library at the nearby town of Keighley. She knew the Bible and read the works of Shakespeare, George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott, and she particularly admired William Wordsworth and Robert Southey. In 1831 and 1832, Charlotte attended Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, and she returned there as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. After working for a couple of years as a governess, Charlotte, with her sister Emily, traveled to Brussels to study, with the goal of opening their own school, but this dream did not materialize once she returned to Haworth in 1844.
In 1846 the sisters published their collected poems under the pen names Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell. That same year Charlotte finished her first novel, The Professor, but it was not accepted for publication. However, she began work on Jane Eyre, which was published in 1847 and met with instant