For the first time a major novel by Charlotte Brontë appears in an edition based directly on the author's manuscript. Like her other mature work, The Professor owes much to her relationship with M. Heger, her Brussels schoolmaster. The first of her full-length novels, it is of special interest since it was written comparatively soon after her experiences in Brussels in the early 1840s, but not published until 1857, after her death. A full introduction gives an account of its composition, analyses the manuscript, and describes the circumstances of its eventual publication, in an inaccurate form, under the editorship of A. B. Nicholls.
Appendices include an unused `Preface' - one of Charlotte Brontë's attempts to `recast' the novel - and a list of substantive variants between the manuscript and the first edition. Her last fragmentary novel, `Emma', begun after Villette, is now transcribed directly from the author's rough draft, instead of from the polished and revised text produced by Nicholls, George Smith, and Thackeray for the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.
The volume contains full indexes to Biblical and literary allusions in Charlotte Brontë's four major novels, thus giving a fascinating guide to the nature and extent of her reading. The editors also make use of continuing research by providing a list of additions and corrections to all previous volumes in the Clarendon Brontë series.
