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.

Shirley was written between 1848 and 1849 at a time of great social and political unrest in England and throughout continental Europe.The miseries induced by trade depression and an economy in the process of rapid change from an agrarian to an industrial base had led to mob violence and riot. However, Charlotte Bronte placed Shirley in the latter part Of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-i5) and deliberately designed it as a social novel which would be a counterpoint to her great dramatic romance, Jane Eyre, which had been published in 1847.

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 GErard 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.Shirley is rich in historic detail and, while failing to be "as unromantic as Monday morning", which is what Charlotte Bronte wrote that she intended it to be, it also contains a powerfully argued case for more useful occupations for women, who were at that time condemned either to marry or to lead the life of an old maid. The character of Shirley herself is drawn as an example of a woman of independent means and lively disposition who enjoys the freedom to act as she wishes, it should not be overlooked that as Charlotte Bronte was writing of the suffering of the characters in Shirley, she was witnessing the real life suffering and deaths of her unfortunate brother Branwell and sister Emily, on 24 September and 19 December i848 respectively, and of her sister Anne on 28 May 1849. However, Shirley is not a sombre novel and it has a perpetual relevance in its exploration of humanity"s efforts to reconcile personal and economic aspirations with social justice and harmony.

Levitical

The Wagons

Mr Yorke

Mr Yorke (continued)

Hollow"s Cottage

Coriolanus

The Curates at Tea

Noah and Moses

Briarmains

Old Maids

Fieldhead

Shirley and Caroline

Further Communications on Business

Shirley Seeks to be Saved by Works

Mr Donne"s ExodUs

Whitsuntide

The School Feast

Which the Genteel Reader is Recommended to

Skip, Low Persons being here Introduced

A Summer Night

Tomorrow

Mrs Pryor

Two Lives

An Evening Out

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

The West Wind Blows

Old Copy-books

The First Bluestocking

Phoebe

Louis Moore

Rushedge - a Confessional

Uncle and Niece

The Schoolboy and the Wood-nymph

Martin"s Tactics

Case of Domestic Persecution - Remarkable

Instance of Pious Perseverance in the

Discharge of Religious Duties

Wherein Matters Make some Progress,

but not much

Written in the Schoolroom

The Winding-up