Jane Eyre (Hardbound - 2023)

Jane Eyre remains one of the most widely read of English Classics. In this novel, Charlotte Bronte invented a romantic tale of passion and thrill and created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all the times. When her first novel, The Professor, was rejected for publication, she concluded that publishers preferred the 'wild, wonderful and thrilling' to the 'plain and homely'.

The heroine, Jane Eyre, is a penniless orphan of sharp wit and independent spirit, although outwardly of plain appearance. Her employer, Mr. Rochester, a brooding, melancholy figure, is given to rough outbursts of temper. Their unconventional love story is the central theme of this stormy, intense and introspective novel.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) sister of Emily (Jane) and Anne Bronte was the third child of Reverend Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell Bronte. Her father was an Irish stock and was known for his picturesque, free-flowing speech, poetry and imagination. Her mother was a methodist from Cornwall having literary leanings. Charlotte, like her sister Emily and Anne, attended the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge, which forms the model for Lowood in Jane Eyre, and which Charlotte largely blamed for her later poor health. She was employed as a teacher from 1835 to 1838 and was subsequently a governess. In 1842 she, along with her sister Emily, went to study languages in Brussels, where during 1843 she again worked as a teacher. In 1844 she returned to Haworth where she got engaged with a project for a school at Haworth Parsonage. She involved deeply in love with M. Heger, who did not respond to the letters she wrote to him after her return to Haworth.

In 1845 she ‘discovered’ (or so she alleged) the poems of Emily and brought out a joint publication entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily and Anne) in 1846. Charlotte’s first novel The Professor could not find a publisher in her lifetime, but Jane Eyre published in 1847 by Smith, Elder, & Co. (Published under pseudonym Currer Bell) met immediate success, arousing much speculation about its authorship. To quell the suspicion that the Bell pseudonyms concealed but one author, Charlotte and Anne visited Smith, Elder, & Co. and disclosed their identities. She wrote two more novels, Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853); The Professor was published posthumously in 1857. She occasionally visited London where she became known to various writers including William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. In 1854 she finally overcame her father’s objections and married but unfortunately died in the following year of illness probably associated with pregnancy.