Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

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Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s more well-known novels,

The Professor

(1857) exists as something of an outlier. It was her first finished manuscript (completed around 1846), yet it was rejected for publication during her lifetime. It is, therefore, her only posthumously published novel. Readers and scholars alike have judged the book, as Heather Glen puts it, “an unpleasant and oddly disquieting book” (Glen 7). Glen also notes that early reviewers, “indeed, Charlotte Brontë’s publisher himself—saw

The Professor

as an abortive draft of

Villette

(1853), cruder, clumsier, less finished” (7). As Brontë’s only novel with a male narrator and protagonist,

The Professor

is atypical as part of her oeuvre—yet the story itself shows a novice writer finding her way as a novelist before…

2110 words

Citation: Caddy, Scott. "The Professor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7467, accessed 28 March 2024.]

7467 The Professor 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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