With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls’ boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster and her own complex feelings.
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied Sleep never came!’ Based on Charlotte Bront’s own experiences as a governess in Brussels, her last novel tells the story of lonely Lucy Snowe who finds employment at a girls’ boarding school in the town of Villette. Finding the students challenging and experiencing the pain of unrequited love for the first time, Lucy becomes increasingly isolated in a world governed by societal expectation and struggles to maintain her integrity in the face of her envious and watc