Tales of Angria gathers the early stories that Charlotte Brontë wrote as a young woman, set in an imaginary African colony she and her brother Branwell had invented in childhood. The tales follow dukes, rival politicians, soldiers and glamorous, passionate women in a world of war, ambition and romantic intrigue. Written in a lavish and sometimes melodramatic style, they show a teenage author testing her imagination and her skill with character and plot. Readers interested in how she became a novelist will find the seeds of her later themes, including desire, rivalry and the pull between duty and feeling.