Who are you, Miss Snowe? ... “Who am I indeed? Perhaps a person in disguise.” Friendless and family, Lucy Snowe sails from England to the Continent to find work at a girls’ school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles with rebellious students, an initially distrustful headmaster, and her own complex feelings—first for the school’s English doctor and later for the authoritarian Professor Paul Emmanuel. Based on her own unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels, Charlotte Brontë’s final and most autobiographical novel is a gripping study of isolation and the pain of unrequited love, told by a heroine determined to maintain her independent spirit despite adversity. This edition includes a new introduction exploring the novel’s social and historical context, a chronology of Brontë’s life, and full explanatory notes. “I have only just returned to a sense of real wonder about myself, for I have read Villette… There is something supernatural in its power,” wrote George Eliot.