Villette is a novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After a family disaster, Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional Belgian town of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. The novel is partially based on Brontë's life as in 1842, when she was 26, the author traveled to Brussels, Belgium, where she enrolled in a boarding school and taught English in return for board and tuition. According to Virginia Wool, Villette "is her finest novel. All her force, and it is the more tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion." Villette was Charlotte Brontë's last novel published during her life.