FIRST EDITION CHARLOTTE BRONTE
BRONTE, Charlotte. Shirley. London: Smith, Elder and Company. 1849.
8vo. Original tan cloth with decorative blind-stamped border to both boards on all and gilt lettering to spines, pages untrimmed; pp. vol. 1: [iv], 303, [+16 publisher’s ads]; vol. 2: [ii], 308, vol. 3: [iv], 317 [+3 publisher’s ads]; bumping to head and tail of spines and extremities with slight loss to head and tail of Vol. 2, discoloration to all upper edges; minor toning to endpapers, minimal ink bleeding to rear pastedown in Vol. 2, neat ownership inscription "H Bridson, West Bank, 1857" to all front pastedowns, blindstamp of "Simms & Dinham Booksellers, Manchester" to front free endpapers; a very good set.
First edition, first printing.
"If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel…"
Charlotte Brontë's only historical novel and also her most topical. Set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the depression arising out of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, Shirley unfolds against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. The friendship between the two women, and the contrast between their situations, is at the heart of a book suffused with the author's yearning for an earlier time. Shirley is concerned with the search for female identity and independence, of love and its complications, and of the emerging modern world.
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