Charlotte Brontë. Shirley.

“A Mad Dog in a Coffee-House” by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827)

** spoiler alert ** Here be spoilers.
Jane Eyre was a masterpiece, and it’s hard to get around it in reading and reviewing Charlotte Brontë’s other novels. That’s particularly true for Shirley, which has the same slow build as JE and Villette, without either the weirdness and genius of JE or the meticulous portrait of depression in Villette, so I’ll mention the book’s flaws, first.
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