From AudioFile
Charlotte Brontë's first novel certainly benefits from the vocal gifts of reader James Wilby. Title character William Crimsworth's attempt to find his own way in a world obsessed with money and manners comes alive as Bronte's vivid images and Wilby's lyrical delivery combine. Met with a rainbow of characters, the listener can easily establish each as an individual and understand how they impact Crimsworth. This recording is a fine introduction to nineteenth-century literature. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Bronte completed. Rejected by the publisher who took on the work of her sisters in 1846 - Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights - it remained unpublished until 1857, two years after Charlotte Bronte's death. Like Villette (1853), The Professor is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work formulated a new aesthetic that questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society. 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, who is perhaps the author's most realistic feminist heroine. The Professor endures today as both a harbinger of Bronte's later novels and a compelling read in its own right.

SYNOPSIS

William Crimsworth, the Bronte's only male narrator, a teacher in Belgium, becomes involved in a flirtation with the headmistress of the school, but that ends when he falls in love with a student-teacher. The jealousy of the jilted headmistress creates obstacles to happiness. Considered to be the basis for Bronte's better-known work, "Villette."

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

This first novel went unpublished during Bront 's lifetime, rejected by publishers each time it was submitted despite her growing fame for such works as Jane Eyre and Shirley. It was released only after her untimely passing, when there was a great hunger for anything from the pen of this now-famous author, but it was a poor addition to her work. A critic in 1857 wrote that it was "crude, unequal, and unnatural to a fault; it has all the unripe qualities of a bad first work ." And indeed it is dreary and confusing, uninvolving and filled with minutiae, and suffers from many awkward and improbable devices, not the least of which is the choice of a male protagonist to tell a tale with many autobiographical aspects. The reading by James Wilby is expert and probably as exciting and dramatic as is possible, given the material. Comprehensive literary collections will want to add this early work of a major author, but more popular collections can safely pass it by.--Harriet Edwards, East Meadow P.L., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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