Villette was Charlotte Bronte's last and most autobiographical novel. Loneliness, isolation, repression, emotional pain, unrequited love are strong elements and themes in the story. Lucy travels to work in a girl's boarding school. Despite a host of unfavourable circumstances Lucy is determined to be true to her independent spirit. In the end, Lucy wants the reader to imagine a happy ending. Will you?

1865 Best Seller.

The story of Hans and his sister's participation in a skating competition is interwoven with their class reading of _The Hero of Haarlem_ (the boy who saved his country by plugging a dike with his finger). Somehow poplular myth has transferred Han's name to the dike boy.

1874 Best Seller.

In his day E. P. Roe was a bigger seller than Mark Twain.

"In the Opening of a Chestnut Burr, Mr. Roe has made a marked advance upon his two previous stories. He has already exhibited a remarkable power of description, which in this volume he uses with good effect in the scenes of fire and shipwreck. It is thoroughly religious, thoroughly Christian both in tone and teaching." -- Harper's Magazine. (a contemporary review)

1896 Best Seller.

Tom Grogan is a stevedore on the 1890s New York City docks. Tom dies unexpectedly and his wife Mary decides to carry on his business by taking Toms place. It is not easy to maintain the fiction that she is Tom Grogan, nor to keep the business afloat in the face of many challenges.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1905.

The appearance of a new novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward is always a literary event of the first magnitude. -- New York Times, 1905