Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s more well-known novels,

(1857) exists as something of an outlier. It was her first finished manuscript (completed around 1846), yet it was rejected for publication during her lifetime. It is, therefore, her only posthumously published novel. Readers and scholars alike have judged the book, as Heather Glen puts it, “an unpleasant and oddly disquieting book” (Glen 7). Glen also notes that early reviewers, “indeed, Charlotte Brontë’s publisher himself—saw

as an abortive draft of

(1853), cruder, clumsier, less finished” (7). As Brontë’s only novel with a male narrator and protagonist,

is atypical as part of her oeuvre—yet the story itself shows a novice writer finding her way as a novelist before…

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Citation: Caddy, Scott. "The Professor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7467, accessed 18 December 2024.]