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Villette
Villette
Jul 24, 2025 6:14 AM

Author:Charlotte Bronte

Villette

Read this beautiful, romantic feminist classic from the author of Jane Eyre.

When Lucy Snowe leaves England to look for a new life on the Continent she has no idea what lies in store for her. This quiet, lonely girl must learn quickly when she finds herself teaching in a foreign school, with no friends or family to rely on. However, it's not long before figures from Lucy's past appear and she becomes involved in dilemmas which inspire new and passionate feelings in her.

'I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading Villette ... There is something preternatural about its power' George Eliot

Reviews

Weird and wonderful

—— Guardian

So original, so transgressive in its content and so startlingly unorthodox in its form, that its 19th-century readers were dumbfounded by it...a visionary description of psychic life ...a subtle and dazzlingly inventive exploration of areas of consciousness never mapped in fiction before, and seldom since

—— Sunday Times

Villette has always been the most heart-squeezing of the Bronte novels...a perfect study of quiet desperation...a rich novel

—— Sunday Express

A novel with an unconscious mind. The deeper you dig, the more disturbing it becomes

—— Lucasta Miller , Independent

Charlotte Bronte's most profound achievement

—— Independent

Sensitive and timeless in the descriptions of a young woman's emotions as she copes with the pain of unrequited love

—— The Times

Romantic but refreshingly witty

—— Sunday Mirror

A comic and creepy debut novel...Park transforms the banal into the eerie

—— New Yorker

sketches so expertly; if you like this genre, he gets the tone just right

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

Park's eye for the minutiae of office life is sharp... This is as funny as Seinfeld

—— Brandon Robshaw , The Independent on Sunday

Chilling, compulsive, and hilarious

—— Elle, 'Read of the Month'

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

A virtuoso performance...This is a collection of stories that will be re-reading exceptionally well, like an album of brilliant songs you keep wanting to hear again

—— Brandom Robshaw , Independent on Sunday

Funny and furious, Kennedy's tales of floundering marriages and domestic disappointment follow an anarchic path of their own

—— Independent

Kennedy's superlative work always attracts admiration

—— Lesley McDowell , Herald
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