The Professor (Paperback-2023)

About the Book

Before Jane Eyre, The Professor was the first novel written by Charlotte Bronte. It was published posthumously in 1857 and remains a classic among her other novels Jane Eyre and Villette. The novel is a trajectory of the protagonist William Crimsworth's life, an Englishman who becomes a teacher in Brussels. Bronte's hero escapes from a humiliating clerkship in a Yorkshire mill to find work as a teacher in Belgium, where he falls in love with an impoverished student–teacher, Bronte's most realistic feminist heroine. Told from Crimsworth's point of view, the only male narrator, this work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned the presuppositions of Victorian society. The Professor is a tale of Romance revolving around Crimsworth's relationships and revelations as he matures.

About the Author

Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) was an English novelist and poet whose novels became major classics in Victorian literature. She was the eldest of the Bronte sisters (Anne Bronte, Emily Bronte, and Charlotte Bronte) after the death of her two elder siblings, which left her with responsibilities. She started writing poems at the age of thirteenth and published them in homemade magazines. She first started writing under her pen name Currer Bell, along with her sisters, who also wrote under pseudonyms until 1848, after which they were celebrated in the London literary circle and achieved success. Her most famous novels—The Professor, Villette, and Jane Eyre—were published posthumously, after 1855. The novel, The Professor, parallels much of her own experiences in Brussels as a pupil and a teacher at Constantin Heger’s school for girls. Another novel by Bronte, Jane Eyre, is a Victorian fiction classic that remarkably questioned the natural desires and morality and challenges the gender roles of society, diving into the genre of gothic fiction. The portrayal of the setting in the novel is inspired by her own experiences in school.

She died in Haworth, England, in 1855 aged 38.