Shirley (novel)

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**Shirley**
Author	Charlotte Brontë
Country	United Kingdom
Publisher
Released	1849

Shirley is a novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1849. Its popularity led to "Shirley" becoming a woman's name. (In the novel, Shirley's father gave her the name he had intended to give a son.)

The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811–1812, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The four central characters are studies in contrast: brothers Robert Moore (an industrialist whose mill is idle because of the war) and Louis Moore (a private tutor to a family's children); and their two loves Caroline Helstone, timid and uncertain, and Shirley Keeldar, heiress to a fortune. The Keeldar family home in Shirley is called Fieldhead; Charlotte Bronte based Fieldhead on an Elizabethan Manor House called Oakwell Hall.

The novel has only been filmed once to date, in 1922. The silent adaptation was done by A. V. Bramble and Carlotta Breese starred as the title-character Shirley.