Emma Brown

8vo. Pp. [viii], 438. Pictorial wraps.

A retro-Victorian novel, based on a 20-page unfinished manuscript by Charlotte Brontë, consisting of the initial two chapters and the working title 'Emma'.

Incorporating a fragment entitled 'The Story of Willie Ellin' and many allusions to Brontë's letters, Boylan develops the arrival of a seemingly wealthy young girl, "Matilda Fitzgibbon", at a provincial boarding school with questions arising as to her true identity. Further focussing on social issues such as the squalid conditions of London's poor and its criminal underworld and introducing the theme of child prostitution, Boylan gives Brontë's unfinished novel a darker hue that recalls Dickens's late novels.

An earlier attempt at completion – at first misattributed to Elizabeth Goudge – by Constance Savery was published as Emma by 'Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady' by J.M. Dent in 1980. "[Y]ou want to know what happens, and who Emma really is – the essential test of success." –Penelope Lively, Sunday Times

[Saverio Tomaiuolo, Victorian Unfinished Novels, The Imperfect Page (p. 9), London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012]