Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The story of Jane Eyre, who experiences the miseries of being an orphaned child in early Victorian society, before becoming a governess at Thornfield Hall and meeting Mr Rochester. Jane shares many of Brontes' own beliefs about the position of women, arguing for a form of sexual equality.

Charlotte Bronte lived from 1816 to 1855. In 1824 she was sent away to school with her four sisters and they were treated so badly that their father brought them home to Haworth in Yorkshire. The elder two sisters died within a few days and Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne were brought up in the isolated village. They were often lonely and loved to walk on the moors. They were all great readers and soon began to write small pieces of verse and stories.

Once Charlotte's informal education was over she began to work as a governess and teacher in Yorkshire and Belgium so that she could add to the low family income and help to pay for her brother Branwell's art education. Charlotte was a rather nervous young woman and didn't like to be away from home for too long. The sisters began to write more seriously and published poetry in 1846 under male pen names - there was a lot of prejudice against women writers. The book was not a success and the sisters all moved on to write novels. Charlotte's best-known book, Jane Eyre, appeared in 1847 and was soon seen as a work of genius. Charlotte really knew how to make characters and situations come alive.

Charlotte's life was full of tragedy, never more so than when her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne died within a few months in 1848/49. She married her father's curate in 1854 but died in 1855, before her fortieth birthday.

Helen M. Cooper is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780140434002
ISBN 10	0140434003
Title	Jane Eyre
Author	Charlotte Bronte
Series	Penguin Classics S
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	1996-03-07
Number of pages	576
Prizes	Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003, Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 21 2003, Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable