This book argues for the significance of contagious disease in critical and biographical assessment of Charlotte Brontë’s work. Waugh argues that contagion, infection, and quarantining strategies are central themes in Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). This book establishes the ways in which Charlotte Brontë was closely engaged with the political and social contexts in which she wrote, extending this to the representation and metaphorical import of illness in Brontë’s novels. Waugh also posits that although miasmatic theories are often...