Charlotte Bronte

Shirley (Illustrated) Charlotte Bronte

Shirley is a social novel written Charlotte Brontë, first published in 1849. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre. The novel is set in Yorkshire in 1811-12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. The novel lead to a great popularity of Shirley's. The title character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the publication of the novel Shirley was an uncommon but distinctly male name. Today it is regarded as a distinctly female name. About the Author: Charlotte Brontë (1816 - 1855) was an English novelist and poet and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature all times. While her first novel, The Professor, was rejected, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. Brontë was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 1855, almost certainly from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy which causes excessive nausea and vomiting.