Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre and sent the manuscript to a publisher under the masculine name Currer Bell: a Miss, she reckoned, would be read less kindly. The novel appeared in 1847 and caused a sensation.

She was born at Thornton, in Yorkshire, in 1816, the daughter of an Irish clergyman. Her mother died early; two elder sisters died at boarding school. Childhood meant a cold house on the moors.

Jane Eyre: an orphan becomes a governess, falls in love with her employer, and learns a terrible secret — a mad first wife living in the house. Love, dignity, honesty.

Her sisters Emily and Anne wrote too — Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. All of them died of tuberculosis before the age of forty. Charlotte was the last, in 1855, while pregnant.