The title character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the publication of the novel, Shirley was an uncommon – but distinctly male – name and would have been an unusual name for a woman. Today it is regarded as a distinctly female name and an uncommon male name. Shirley, A Tale is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Bront?. It was Bront?'s second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Bront?'s pseudonym Currer Bell). Set in Yorkshire during the time of the Luddite unrest—a labor movement that began in 1811-1812 in an effort to protect the interests of the working class—the novel consists of two narrative strands woven together, one involving the struggles of workers against mill owners, and the other involving the romantic entanglements of the two heroines. The novel's popularity led to Shirley's becoming a woman's name.
