Charlotte Brontë’s last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully moving study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love.

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls’ boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school’s English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel.

"I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette..." —George Eliot

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. I am only just returned to a sense of real wonder about me, for I have been reading Villette... (George Eliot)"