Charlotte Bronte was a natural story-teller with a gift for creating memorable characters and for evoking atmosphere. The novel is set among the cloth mills of the author's native Yorkshire and she succeeds brilliantly in creating the full drama of the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars when labour-saving machinery was smashed by desperate, unemployed workers.

Rich in historical detail, Shirley is a human as well

Charlotte Bronte was a natural story-teller with a gift for creating memorable characters and for evoking atmosphere. The novel is set among the cloth mills of the author's native Yorkshire and she succeeds brilliantly in creating the full drama of the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars when labour-saving machinery was smashed by desperate, unemployed workers.

Rich in historical detail, Shirley is a human as well as a social novel with a perpetual relevance in its exploration of humanity's efforts to reconcile personal and economic aspirations with social justice and harmony.

  I Levitical

II The Wagons

 III Mr Yorke

 IV Mr Yorke (continued)

  v Hollow's Cottage

 vI Coriolanus

 VII The Curates at Tea

VIII Noah and Moses

 IX Briarmains

  x OldMaids

 xi Fieldhead

XlI Shirley and Caroline

Xili Further Communications on Business

XlV Shirley Seeks to be Saved by Works

 xv Mr Donne's Exodus

xvi Whitsuntide

xvii The School Feast

XVili Which the Genteel Reader is Recommended to

     Skip, Low Persons being here Introduced

XlX A Summer Night

  XX  TomoTow

xxI Mrs Pryor

xxn Two Lives

xxIII An Evening Out

xxrv The Valley of the Shadow of Death

  xxv The West Wind Blows

 xxvi Old Copy-books

xxvn The First Bluestocking

xxvm Phoebe

 xxIx Louis Moore

  xxx Rushedge - a Confessional

 xxxz Uncle and Niece

xxxn The Schoolboy and the Wood-nymph

xxxIn Martin's Tactics

xxxxv Case of Domestic Persecution - Remarkable

      Instance of Pious Perseverance in the

      Discharge of Religious Duties

xxxv Wherein Matters Make some Progress,

      but not much

xxxvi Written in the Schoolroom

xxxvn The Winding-up