Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

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, the hostility of headmistress Madame Beck, and her own complex feelings - first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor Paul Emanuel. Drawing on her own deeply unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Bronte'sautobiographical novel, the last published during her lifetime, is a powerfully moving study of loneliness and isolation, and the pain of unrequited love, narrated by a heroine determined to preserve an independent spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.

Helen M. Cooper's new introduction places the novel in the context of Bronte's life and career and argues for the importance of the novel as an exploration of imperialism.

'I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette'
George Eliot

'Her finest novel'
Virginia Woolf

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.

About the Author
Charlotte Bronte was born in Yorkshire in 1816. As a child, she was sent to boarding school, where two of her sisters died; she was subsequently educated at home with her younger siblings, Emily, Branwell and Anne. As an adult, Charlotte worked as a governess and taught in a school in Brussels. Jane Eyre was first published in 1847 under the pen-name Currer Bell, and was followed by Shirley (1848), Villette (1853) and The Professor (posthumously published in 1857). In 1854 Charlotte married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died in March of the following year.

Reviews
I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette - there is something preternatural about its power -- George Eliot



Book Information
ISBN 9780241198964
Author Charlotte Bronte
Format Hardback
Page Count 672
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 796g
Dimensions(mm) 204mm * 138mm * 43mm