Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was an English novelist and poet who, together with her sisters Emily and Anne, is among the most important figures in English literature. Born in Thornton, Yorkshire, she grew up in the Haworth parsonage on the Yorkshire moors, and the landscape of her childhood profoundly shaped her imagination and writing. Jane Eyre, published in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell, is her masterpiece and one of the greatest novels in the English language. The story of an orphaned governess who falls in love with her employer, the brooding Mr Rochester, only to discover his terrible secret, the novel was revolutionary in its passionate first-person narration and its assertion of a woman's right to emotional, intellectual and spiritual equality. Available as both a book and an audiobook in numerous editions and performances, Jane Eyre remains essential listening and reading — a novel that speaks as powerfully today about love, independence and moral courage as it did when it was first published nearly two centuries ago.