Published: 1 July 2010
ISBN: 9781407090849
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 560

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Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte

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Jane Eyre is the inspiring heroine of one of the best-loved British novels of all time

Jane Eyre is the inspiring heroine of one of the best-loved British novels of all time.

As an orphan, Jane's childhood is not an easy one but her independence and strength of character keep her going through the miseries inflicted by cruel relatives and a brutal school. However, her biggest challenge is yet to come.

Taking a job as a governess in a house full of secrets, for a passionate man she grows more and more attracted to, ultimately forces Jane to call on all her resources in order to hold on to her beliefs.

Published: 1 July 2010
ISBN: 9781407090849
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 560

Categories:

Share…

About the author

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte 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.

Charlotte Bronte was born at Thornton, Yorkshire, in 1816. Her mother died in 1821, and Charlotte, her four sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Anne, and her brother Branwell were left in the care of their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell. Left to pursue their education mainly at home, all the Bronte children became involved in a rich fantasy life and Charlotte and Branwell collaborated in the invention of the imaginary kingdom of Angria. In 1824 Charlotte went with Maria, Elizabeth and Emily to a school for daughters of the clergy; her experiences there are fictionalized in the Lowood section of Jane Eyre (1847; written under the pseudonym of Currer Bell). She wrote three other novels, Shirey (1849) Vilette (1853) and She Professor (published posthumously in 1857). She also made occasional visits to London where she became known to various writers, including William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. In 1854 Charlotte finally overcame her father's objections and married, but unfortunately she was to die in the following year.

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Praise for Jane Eyre

Never fails to reconnect me to the spirit of real romance. Timeless story. Every page throbs with passion.
Saga Magazine

After all these years, it's the emotions we most respond to in Jane Eyre. This is also a novel about intellectual growth, written by a fiercely intelligent writer. She has a formidable brain as well as a strongly beating heart, and so it will still seem another 100 years from now.
Sam Jordison, Guardian

Wonderful, teasing. That her great novel of wish-fulfilment is still widely devoured is the supreme happy ending.
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Spectator

At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë
Virginia Woolf

Charlotte 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 Trollope

Great genius
William Makepeace Thackeray

Jane 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, Guardian

Marred only by the fact that Charlotte clearly liked Mr Rochester too much; but we can forgive her that. Often given to schoolchildren to read, but you have to be a grown-up to really get it. One of the most perfectly structured novels of all time
Sarah Waters