Shirley (novel) Shirley (novel) Shirley, A Tale is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after "Jane Eyre" (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against a backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. The novel's popularity led to Shirley's becoming a woman's name. The title character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the
Charlotte Jane Charlotte Jane Charlotte Jane was one of the First Four Ships in 1850 to carry emigrants from England to the new colony of Canterbury in New Zealand. The ship is remembered in the name of a road, Charlotte Jane Quay, in the port town of Lyttelton. "Randolph", "Cressy", and "Charlotte Jane" together carried an estimated 790 passengers. In addition, about another 60 worked their passage on the ships or deserted and disembarked. The first of the vessels to arrive was "Charlotte Jane" in Lyttelton on 16 December 1850 in the morning. "Randolph" followed that afternoon. "Sir George Seymour" arrived on