The novel is set in Yorkshire, and for background the author studied back-issues of the Leeds Mercury dealing with the Luddite attacks on factories and the associated violence to property and person. However, Shirley is a human as well as a social novel, dealing with the character and passions of the ambitious, stubborn,modernising mill-owner Robert Grrard Moore, his opportunistic attempt to ally himself through marriage with the wealthy Shirley Keeldar, his rejection by her in favour of his brother and his subsequent marriage to his cousin and true love, Caroline Helstone. ...

Charlotte Bronte was a natural story-teller with a gift for creating memorable characters and for evoking atmosphere. The novel is set among the cloth mills of the author's native Yorkshire and she succeeds brilliantly in creating the full drama of the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars when labour-saving machinery was smashed by desperate, unemployed workers.

Rich in historical detail, Shirley is a human as well as a social novel with a perpetual relevance in its exploration of humanity's efforts to reconcile personal and economic aspirations with social justice and harmony.

I Levitical

II The Wagons

III Mr Yorke

IV Mr Yorke (continued)

V Hollow's Cottage

VI Coriolanus

VII The Curates at Tea

VIII Noah and Moses

IX Briarmains

X OldMaids

XI Fieldhead

XII Shirley and Caroline

XIII Further Communications on Business

XIV Shirley Seeks to be Saved by Works

XV Mr Donne's Exodus

XVI Whitsuntide

XVII The School Feast

XVIII Which the Genteel Reader is Recommended to

  Skip, Low Persons being here Introduced

XIX A Summer Night

XX TomoTow

XXI Mrs Pryor

XXII Two Lives

XXIII An Evening Out

XXIV The Valley of the Shadow of Death

XXV The West Wind Blows

XXVI Old Copy-books

XXVII The First Bluestocking

XXVIII Phoebe

XXIX Louis Moore

XXX Rushedge - a Confessional

XXXI Uncle and Niece

XXXII The Schoolboy and the Wood-nymph

XXXIII Martin's Tactics

XXXXV Case of Domestic Persecution - Remarkable

  Instance of Pious Perseverance in the

  Discharge of Religious Duties

XXXV Wherein Matters Make some Progress,but not much

XXXVI Written in the Schoolroom

XXXVII The Winding-up