Shirley 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). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811-12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against a backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry.