Villette — Charlotte Brontë

Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë After an unspecified family disaster the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional French speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls school where she is drawn into adventure and romance Villette was Charlotte Brontë s third and last novel published during her life It was preceded in writing by The Professor her posthumously published first novel of which Villette is a reworking Jane Eyre and Shirley

My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton Her husband s family had been residents there for generations and bore indeed the name of their birthplace Bretton of Bretton whether by coincidence or because some remote ancestor had been a personage of sufficient importance to leave his name to his neighbourhood I know not