A long-lasting annual tradition at Vail Public Library, which focused on a classic of ancient literature.
Book clubs, programs, and displays are dedicated to the November classics.
November 2022 Selected Title
“Villette” by Charlotte Bronte
About Villette
Charlotte Brontë’s final masterpiece powerfully portrays a woman struggling to reconcile love, jealousy, and a fierce desire for independence.
Having fled a harrowing past in England, Lucy Snowe begins a new life teaching at a boarding school in the great capital of a foreign country. There, as she tries to achieve independence from both outer necessity and inward grief, she finds that her feelings for a worldly doctor and a dictatorial professor threaten her hard-won self-possession. Published in 1853, Charlotte Bronte’s last novel was written in the wake of her grief at the death of her siblings. It has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as a striking modernity of psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness.
Who Was Charlotte Brontë?
Charlotte Brontë worked as a teacher and governess before collaborating on a book of poetry with her two sisters, Emily and Anne, who were writers as well. In 1847, Brontë published the semi-autobiographical novel Jane Eyre, which was a hit and would become a literary classic. Her other novels included Shirley and Villette. She died on March 31, 1855, in Haworth, Yorkshire, England.
Brontë was born on April 21, 1816, in Thornton, Yorkshire, England. Said to be the most dominant and ambitious of the Brontës, Charlotte was raised in a strict Anglican home by her clergyman father and a religious aunt after her mother and two eldest siblings died. She and her sister Emily attended the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge but were largely educated at home. Though she tried to earn a living as both a governess and a teacher, Brontë missed her sisters and eventually returned home.
The deaths of the Brontë siblings are almost as notable as their literary legacy. Her brother, Branwell, and Emily died in 1848, and Anne died the following year.
November 2022 Programs
VIRTUAL BOOKS ‘N BITES
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 10 | 5 P.M. VIA ZOOM
In November, our Books ‘n Bites title is the classic “Villette”
Email Sandy at SRivera@vailgov.com to receive an invitation to the Zoom meeting.
Past Titles
- 2021 – “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
- 2020 – “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett
- 2019 – “My Antonia” by Willa Cather
- 2018 – “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen
- 2017 – “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen
- 2016 – “Emma” by Jane Austen
- 2015 -“Persuasion” by Jane Austen Lecture
