The Secret History of Jane Eyre

The surprising hidden history behind Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

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In this perceptive book, John Pfordresher shares the enthralling story of how Charlotte Brontë wrote her masterpiece and why she tried so vehemently to disown it. What few people knew then—and even fewer know today—was that as she tended her invalid father and held the family together, Brontë was re-imagining her experiences as a governess, her fears for her dissolute brother and her devastating passion for a married man into an immersive, brilliant novel. By aligning the details of Brontë’s life with the timeless characters and plot of Jane Eyre, Pfordresher reveals the remarkable parallels between one of literature’s most beloved heroines and its vulnerable and deeply human creator and why Brontë didn’t want those parallels exposed.