"I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself."

first edition of Jane EyreSmith, Elder & Co.

' Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you ? Do you think I am an automaton ? a machine without feelings ? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup ? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless ? You think wrong ! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart ! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you / now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh : it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, as we are ! '

In 1846 Charlotte Bronte began her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, in a terraced house in Hulme, south Manchester miles away from the Yorkshire moorland that we associate with her family. Charlotte's father the Reverend Patrick Bronte was undergoing cutting-edge eye surgery to rid him of cataracts that left him almost blind. Charlotte used this time well to start writing her book.

 
On the 24th of August she wrote to Messrs. Smith and Elder as follows: "I now send you per rail a MS. entitled, 'Jane Eyre,' a novel in three volumes, by Currer Bell. I find I cannot prepay the carriage of the parcel, as money for that purpose is not received at the small stationhouse where it is left. If, when you acknowledge the receipt of the MS., you would have the goodness to mention the amount charged on delivery, I will immediately transmit it in postage stamps. It is better in future to address, * Mr. Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Bronte, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire,' as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at present. To save trouble, I enclose an envelope."

On October 16, 1847, "Jane Eyre" was published in three volumes. An early copy was sent to Thackeray,
who at once read it, and heartily acknowledged its extraordinary merit.

She afterwards told Mrs. Gaskell that it was not every day she could write, and that sometimes months elapsed before she felt she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written.

'I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield : I love it because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence\ with what I delight in, with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.'
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