Shirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Bronte. It was Bronte's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Bronte's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 181112, 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.
Charlotte Bronte (21 April 1816 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards.