The Professor

About “The Professor”

The Professor is a novel by Charlotte Brontë that was the first she completed. It was rejected by the publisher who later released her sisters' works, Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights, in 1846. The book was not published until 1857, two years after Brontë's death. Based on her time as a language student in Brussels in 1842, the story follows William Crimsworth, a man who leaves a difficult job in a Yorkshire mill to work as a teacher in Belgium. He falls in love with an impoverished student-teacher, who is considered one of Brontë's most realistic feminist characters. The novel offers a new perspective on Victorian society and is seen as a precursor to Brontë's later works.