Charlotte’s (above) novel Jane Eyre revolutionised prose fiction with its intimate first-person narrative by the title character – and was an immediate success
Charlotte Bronte was an English novelist noted for her 1847 work Jane Eyre.
Born in 1816 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, her two younger sisters, Anne and Emily, would also go on to become acclaimed novelists.
Her father Patrick and mother Maria raised the family in Haworth in the 1820s, where Mr Bronte served as an Anglican clergyman.
She studied at Roe Head school, near Huddersfield, in 1831 – but after a year, she returned home to teach her sisters.
In 1835, she went back to the school – as a teacher. There followed a stint as a governess for the Sidgwick family.
After a few months, she decided to open a school with her siblings but the venture failed.
It was then the trio turned to writing, with Charlotte, Emily and Anne using, respectively, the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
Charlotte’s first novel, The Professor was rejected by publishers.
Her second novel published in 1847 was Jane Eyre – a classic story of a penniless orphan who becomes the governess to a ward of the mysterious Mr Rochester, with whom she falls in love, only to discover his terrible secret.
The book revolutionised prose fiction with its intimate first-person narrative by the title character – and was an immediate success.
Charlotte began work on her second novel, Shirley, in 1848, and her third, Villette, was published in 1853.
She died on March 31, 1855 – a year after her marriage to her father’s curate Arthur Bell Nicholls – from suspected tuberculosis.