Robert Moore, a manufacturer in Yorkshire whose business is struggling, has introduced new labor-saving machinery to his cotton mill, resulting in many workers losing their jobs. One night, a group of enraged workers, spurred on by their hungry families, storms in and destroys a new shipment of machines. The next morning, Caroline Helstone, Robert's orphaned young cousin, arrives as usual at the estate for her French lesson with Robert's sister Hortense. The great joy she finds in these visits is Robert, but he is unaware of this and is likely to find it even more difficult to realize from now on. He, on the other hand, sets his sights on the young and beautiful Shirley Keeldar, heiress to a vast fortune.

Charlotte Brontë's Shirley was the follow-up to the successful novel Jane Eyre [1847]. With its social themes, it faced more difficulty in convincing contemporary critics, but today, Shirley is considered one of the English novel classics. It is a passionate yet unsentimental tale of collisions between classes, genders, and generations.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË [1816-1855], born in Thornton in West Yorkshire, was an English novelist, the eldest of the famous Brontë sisters. Several of her novels rank among the classics of English literature, with Jane Eyre as the most famous.