Often acclaimed as her greatest and most mature work, Charlotte Brontë's last, most autobiographical novel drew on her own unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels to create a powerful study of unrequited love.

Lucy Snowe is alone, without friends or family. When she sets sail from England to find work at a girls' boarding school in the town of Villette, she struggles with unruly pupils, and with her own troubling passions: first for the school's English doctor and then for dictatorial professor Paul Emmanuel.