Which Victorian novelist wrote 'Jane Eyre'?

Charlotte Brontë wrote the Victorian novel Jane Eyre. It was published on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. under Brontë’s pen name, Currer Bell.

The novel is a Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, following Jane from an unhappy childhood through education, employment as a governess and her complicated relationship with Edward Rochester. Its first-person narration gives readers direct access to Jane’s moral, emotional and spiritual development.

Jane Eyre was notable for presenting a heroine with strong principles, self-respect and an insistence on personal independence. It combines romance, Gothic suspense and social criticism, addressing class, gender, religion and the limited choices available to women in nineteenth-century Britain.

A frequent mix-up concerns the Brontë sisters. Anne Brontë wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, while Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights. Charlotte’s novel was originally credited to Currer Bell, so early readers did not initially know that its author was a woman. The book’s mysterious attic figure is Bertha Mason, not Jane’s sister or a supernatural ghost.