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Has anyone given Shirley a go? I loved the really fierce, passionate tone of this book and its concerns around feminism and class. Shirley is a really intriguing heroine and in many respects pushes the boundary further than Jane Eyre does.

Though I will never love 'Shirley' as much as 'Jane Eyre' I think it is a superb novel. A point worth mentioning is that though now, for obvious reasons, we associate the name Shirley with childish cuteness, in Charlotte's time it was predominantly a man's name, and the character was based on her sister Emily. Some people even think that the harrowing incident where Shirley puts a hot iron to the bite of a suspected rabid dog is based on a real incident.

I prefer Shirley to Jane Eyre, but I wonder if that's because I was forced to read the latter at school. Very rarely does that build a love for a text...