&sq=&lang=&file=File:Shirley_a_tale_-_Page_n8.jpg) Title page of the first edition, 1849 | |
| Author | Charlotte Brontë |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Social novel |
| Set in | Yorkshire, 1811–12 |
| Publisher | Smith, Elder & Co. |
Publication date | 26 October 1849 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print: hardback |
| Pages | 572, in three volumes |
| 823.8 | |
| LC Class | PR4167 .S4 1849 |
| Preceded by | Jane Eyre |
| Followed by | Villette |
| Text | Shirley at Wikisource |
Shirley, A Tale is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry.
The novel's popularity led to the surname Shirley becoming popular as a first name for women. Brontë tells the reader it was a tradition in the family to only give this surname as a first name to male children.[1] It wasn't commonly used as a first name in England before the book.[2] It is now regarded as a female first name.
- ^ "...she had no Christian name but Shirley; her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage, Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a boy they had been blessed..." Shirley , Chapter XI
- ^ Dunkling, Leslie (1983). Everyman's Dictionary of First Names. London: J.M. Dent. p. 257. ISBN 0460030310.