Olive

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 Bronte's novel raises questions of family, race and nation.