Charlotte Brontë

Jane Austen

The ruthless and cruel Emma causes a great many problems for Mrs. Chalfont, the narrator, and for the abandoned child, Martina, in a new completion of Charlotte Bronte's last, unfinished novel

Emma

Raya 

"[...] Hundreds of those who, like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curiosity upon this, the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand which wrote Jane Eyre" 
- William Makepeace Thackeray, The Last Sketch. 

Charlotte was able to write only two chapters before her tragic demise in 1855. The story is narrated by a widow named Mrs. Chalfont who talks about a ladies' school owned by the Wilcox sisters.The plot progresses with the arrival of an apparently rich heiress named Matilda Fitzgibbon in the institution. We are introduced with characters of the local gentleman Mr. Ellin and a dauntless pupil of the very institution named Diana.The story takes a turn as false identity of this timid and shy girl comes out and Mr. Ellin ventures to untangle it. A couple of paragraphs follow these incidents so far mentioned and the reader comes to a dead end. 

As I reached the last line of this fragment, my heart swelled and before I could realise anything, tears were streaming down my cheeks. I grew pensive for a while and sank in thoughts about this promising work and what Brontë would have written had she lived. Author Clare Boylan gave a final version of this manuscript one hundred fifty years later in her novel 'Emma Brown'.

ℰ.

Clare Boylan

When Charlotte Bronte died in 1855, she left behind the beginnings of a new novel - twenty pages of a work in progress called Emma. Now, almost 150 years later, Clare Boylan has returned to this most intriguing of fragments, and turned them into an astonishing story of mystery, atmosphere and page-turning suspense. When Conway Fitzgibbon arrives at Fuchsia Lodge with his daughter Matilda, the headmistress Miss Wilcox couldn't be more delighted. The ladies' school is limited in numbers and eager for new pupils, particularly ones so finely dressed, and boasting a father who is 'quite the gentleman'. But as Christmas approaches, and Miss Wilcox inquires about arrangements for the holidays, she is in for a shock. Conway Fitzgibbon, like the address he left behind, does not exist. So who is Matilda? With Miss Wilcox unable to extract any information out of the girl, it falls to a local lawyer, Mr Ellin, and a young widow, Isabel Chalfont, to unravel the truth. What they discover is a tale that travels the highs and lows of nineteenth-century England, an investigation that begins as curiosity and ends up changing all their lives forever . . .

Emma

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