This perennially popular novel, the basis for a number of films, tells the story of a plain governess who, after early life difficulties, falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. It was first published under the nom de plume of "Currer Bell".
Brontë believed that art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed this experience into a novel with universal appeal. Commercially it was an instant success, and initially received favourable reviews. The critic G. H. Lewes wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit", declaring it to be "suspiria de profundis!" (sighs from the depths). The book's style was innovative, combining naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely first-person female perspective.
