Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom.

Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August 1816. She died, aged 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December that year (but dated 1818). Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume and published together, but also because both stories are set partly in Bath, a fashionable city with which Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801 to 1805. Besides the theme of persuasion, the novel evokes other topics, such as the Royal Navy, in which two of Jane Austen's brothers ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. As in Northanger Abbey, the superficial social life of Bath-well known to Austen, who spent several relatively unhappy and unproductive years there-is portrayed extensively and serves as a setting for the second half of the book. In many respects Persuasion marks a break with Austen's previous works, both in the more biting, even irritable satire directed at some of the novel's characters and in the regretful, resigned outlook of its otherwise admirable heroine, Anne Elliot, in the first part of the story. Against this is set the energy and appeal of the Royal Navy, which symbolises for Anne and the reader the possibility of a more outgoing, engaged, and fulfilling life, and it is this worldview which triumphs for the most part at the end of the novel.

With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Brontë reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquette. The first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journey - a journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.

Bored and restless in London's Restoration Court, Lady Dona escapes into the British countryside with her restlessness and thirst for adventure as her only guides. Eventually Dona lands in remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall. Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him.

In her 1963 memoir, “Force of Circumstance,” Simone de Beauvoir made a fleeting and tantalizing reference to a work of fiction she had abandoned. She described her attempt to write a story centered on her best friend Zaza, who died young of viral encephalitis. In the decades since, literary scholars have wondered what became of the manuscript. Now the book, “The Inseparables,” is finally being published, after Beauvoir’s adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, decided to start releasing the works of fiction from the archive she inherited. The 176-page novel, which is being released in France in the fall of 2020 and in the United States the following year, illuminates a formative chapter of Beauvoir’s early life, and a pivotal relationship that shaped her views on gender inequality and sexism. From: nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/coming-soon-new-fiction-from-simone-de-beauvoir.html

In her 1963 memoir, “Force of Circumstance,” Simone de Beauvoir made a fleeting and tantalizing reference to a work of fiction she had abandoned. She described her attempt to write a story centered on her best friend Zaza, who died young of viral encephalitis. In the decades since, literary scholars have wondered what became of the manuscript. Now the book, “The Inseparables,” is finally being published, after Beauvoir’s adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, decided to start releasing the works of fiction from the archive she inherited. The 176-page novel, which is being released in France in the fall of 2020 and in the United States the following year, illuminates a formative chapter of Beauvoir’s early life, and a pivotal relationship that shaped her views on gender inequality and sexism. From: nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/coming-soon-new-fiction-from-simone-de-beauvoir.html

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fuses individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale creates one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.