The close friendship between Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor began in boarding school and lasted for the rest of their lives. It was Mary Taylor, in fact, who inspired Bronte to leave her oppressive parsonage home and go to Brussels, the eventual setting for her novel, Villette. Mary herself led a much less restricted life, especially in her later years as a feminist essayist who strongly urged women to consider their "first duty" to be working to support themselves.
In Miss Miles, her only novel, Taylor breaks with tradition by creating a profoundly feminist and morally intense work...