Charlotte Brontë - Napoleon and the Spectre

Charlotte Brontë wrote “Napoleon and the Spectre” in 1833, when she was 17. The story is taken from the manuscript of her novella The Green Dwarf. In its original context, the tale is overheard being told by “a little dapper man” to a group of Frenchmen at an inn (1996, 127). When it is finished, Napoleon himself enters the inn and arrests the little man for having recounted such a “scandalous anecdote” (1996, 130). Although extracts from the story appeared in a literary journal in 1897, it was not published in its entirety until 1919, when Clement Shorter printed a limited edition for private circulation. It was published for a wide audience for the first time in The Twelve Adventurers and Other Stories (1925) and has since appeared in editions of Brontë’s juvenilia and in various short story anthologies. (Source)

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