Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre originally published as Jane An Autobiography) is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name “Currer Bell” on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.

The novel revolutionized prose fiction by being the first to focus on its protagonist’s moral and spiritual development through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by psychological intensity. Charlotte Brontë has been called the “first historian of the private consciousness”, and the literary ancestor of writers like Marcel Proust and James Joyce.