The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel, published after her death. It follows an Englishman who goes to Belgium to teach and build an independent life, and his slow, hard-won progress in work and love. It is worth listening to for its plain, realistic style and an early glimpse of Brontë's narrative voice.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE PROFESSOR
by (AKA Charlotte Brontë) Currer
Bell
PREFACE.
This little book was written before either “Jane Eyre” or “Shirley,” and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had not indeed published anything before I commenced “The
Professor,” but in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely. At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an author more surprise than pleasure.
I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I
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