Fleeing an unhappy past in England, penniless Lucy Snowe starts life anew at a boarding school in cosmopolitan Villette, a stand-in for Brussels. The mystery, jealousy, and love that she finds there give Charlotte Brontë's final novel much of the Gothic tone and psychological incisiveness that prompted George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and others to call Villette her finest work. Based on Brontë's own experiences in Brussels and her attachment to a brilliant teacher with a strong and eccentric personality, this superb romantic novel is an exceptional example of how a great writer transforms the ordinary events of her life into vivid and exciting art. Villette represents the inimitable Brontë genius by giving us a masterful portrait of Lucy Snowe, who belongs beside the great nineteenth-century literary heroines—and who will strongly appeal to modern readers.

With a New Introduction by Adriana Trigiani and an Afterword by Helen Benedict