Olive: A Novel

First published in 1850, Olive traces its eponymous heroine''s progress from her ill-starred birth to maturity as a painter and wife. The crippled child of parents who are disgusted by her physical ''imperfection'', a curvature of the spine, Olive struggles to take her place in the world as artist and woman. Published three years after Jane Eyre, Olive''s swift fictional response to Charlotte Bron...