Shirley, a Tale

Charlotte Bronte (1816-55) had a natural gift for story-telling, for creating memorable characters, and for evoking atmosphere. Shirley, a novel with a strongly regional flavour, is a dramatic tale of the Luddite riots during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars, when labour-saving machinery was smashed by unemployed workers. Before writing Shirley, which is set among the cloth mills of Yorkshire, her own county, Charlotte Bronte steeped herself in the history of the period, reading old newspaper files and her sympathy with the sufferings of the working people, and appreciation of Yorkshire character combine to make this one of the great novels of industrial England. Shirley was first published in 1849, and the character of Shirley herself is based upon that of Charlotte's sister, Emily.