New edition of Shirley

Oxford University Press publishes this month a new edition of Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (recently on the news with a possible film version).

Shirley
New Edition

Charlotte Brontë

Edited by Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten (Executive Director and Professor, University of British Columbia)

New introduction by Janet Gezari ( Lucy Marsh Haskell Professor of English, Connecticut College)

ISBN-10: 0-19-929716-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-929716-0
Publication date: 15 February 2007
624 pages, 196x129 mm
Series: Oxford World's Classics

Description

* Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's only historical novel and her most topical one, and it also expresses her sense of bereavement following the deaths of her three siblings. This new edition partners the most authoritative text with the critically up-to-date editorial apparatus.
* Book reset to improve its appearance while retaining the authoritative Clarendon edition text
* Janet Gezari's new introduction highlights the personal events in Brontë's life that influenced the sense of loss in the novel as well as the social and political context of the Chartist riots, the independence of women, and the relation of Shirley to Brontë's other writing.
* New and up-to-date bibliography.
* Revised notes include translations of all the French phrases in the novel for the first time.

New to this edition

* New introduction by Janet Gezari
* Updated select bibliography
* Revised notes, including translations of all the French in the novel
* Text newly reset to improve appearance.

'You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don't shriek...you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob.'

Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's only historical novel and her most topical one. Written at a time of social unrest, it is set during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when economic hardship led to riots in the woollen district of Yorkshire. A mill-owner, Robert Moore, is determined to introduce new machinery despite fierce opposition from his workers; he ignores their suffering, and puts his own life at risk. Robert sees marriage to the wealthy Shirley Keeldar as the solution to his difficulties, but he loves his cousin Caroline. She suffers misery and frustration, and Shirley has her own ideas about the man she will choose to marry. The friendship between the two women, and the contrast between their situations, is at the heart of this compelling novel, which is suffused with Brontë's deep yearning for an earlier time.

Categories: Books, Shirley