Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816. Her father was curate of Haworth, Yorkshire, and her mother died when she was five years old, leaving five daughters and one son. In 1824 Charlotte, Maria, Elizabeth and Emily were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergymen's daughters, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. The children were taught at home from this point on and together they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Charlotte worked as a teacher from 1835 to 1838 and then as a governess. In 1846, along with Emily and Anne, Charlotte published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.After this Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, Anne wrote Agnes Grey and Charlotte wrote The Professor. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were both published but Charlotte's novel was initially rejected. In 1847 Jane Eyre became her first published novel and met with immediate success. Between 1848 and 1849 Charlotte lost her remaining siblings: Emily, Branwell and Anne. She published Shirley in 1849, Villette in 1853 and in 1854 she married the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died the next year, on 31 March 1855.

A beautiful gift, and perfect gems for bookworms.—So DarlingAt the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë—Virginia WoolfJane Eyre's suspense-laden, melodramatic plot - featuring child cruelty and attempted bigamy, as well as the celebrated madwoman - explains much of its appeal... Jane Eyre is a book into which generations of readers have escaped. And yet it seems to provide something far more sustaining than the escapist fantasy... Her technical skill at writing the self in a first-person narrative is supreme, her words carefully chosen—Lucasta Miller, GuardianCharlotte Bronte was surely a marvellous woman. If it could be right to judge the work of a novelist from one small portion of one novel [JE], and to say of an author that he is to be accounted as strong as he shows himself to be in his strongest morsel of work, I should be inclined to put Miss Bronte very high indeed. I know of no interest more thrilling than that which she has been able to throw into the characters of Rochester and the governess, in the second volume of Jane Eyre—Anthony TrollopeGreat genius—William Makepeace ThackerayPassionately independent orphan falls for the perfect romantic anti-hero. But then she discovers what he keeps in his attic...—Maggie O’Farrell