Editorial Review Book Description Demonstrating the remarkable range of their powers, this volume of three works by the Bronte sisters offers readers the opportunity to witness their unique combination of realism and romance which places these novels among the greatest works of nineteenth century literature. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre met immediate success when it was first published in 1847 and remains a much-loved classic. Considered by the public to be rough and strange when it was originally published, Emily Bronte's only novel Wuthering Heights has become one the most popular of all English novels. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte's second novel, was a dramatic and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society. It has since become a classic, compelling in its imaginative power, the realism and range of its dialogue, and its psychological insight into the characters involved in a marital battle. ... Read more Customer Reviews (13)
My favorite piece of literature
How can I put into words how much I love this book? I read it for the first time when I was 12, and at 26, it still has the power to stir me as it once did. It has everything one could possibly want in a book. Romance, lust, horrid relatives, a brooding hero, near-death experiences, and to top it off, a mad woman in the attic.I have read literally hundreds and hundreds of books, some more than once, and still Jane Eyre remains my favorite. It is , in my opinion, a must-read in everyone's lifetime. The best of the Bronte sisters work, let alone Charlotte's, you cannot possibly be disappionted at reading this book.
A Brit Lit classic
Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" was never one of my favorite British novels. However, I finally revisited the book after many years and enjoyed it much more this time around.
Jane Eyre is a young, determined girl who is determined to find her proper place in the world. As an orphan who was brought up by her cruel aunt, Jane is sent away to boarding school at a young age, where she and the other students suffer under the hand of an evil headmaster. Things improve at the school when the institution's poor conditions are brought to light following a typhus epidemic, and Jane finishes her schooling and then remains at the facility as a teacher for several years.
Although she's content working at the school, Jane still thinks that life has something else in store for her. She accepts a governess position at Thornfield Manor, where she is employed by the dark, brooding Mr. Rochester. Despite his rather surly disposition, Jane finds herself falling in love with Rochester, and is stunned when he returns her affections and proposes marriage. Unfortunately, the wedding never takes place due to a massive secret that Rochester unsuccessfully tries to keep hidden. Jane ultimately flees Thornfield and arrives at another manor called Marsh End, where many surprises await her. Another man eventually proposes marriage to Jane, but she must listen to her heart and return to the one place where she's ever truly felt at home.
Jane possesses great strength, self-worth and personal dignity. She's a woman who stays true to her principles throughout her entire life, regardless of the many challenges thrown into her path. Also, "Jane Eyre" is a love story of sorts, and it has a very romantic ending, which I always enjoy.
I still think there are parts of this novel that really drag, but I appreciate it a lot more than I did when I was younger. "Jane Eyre" doesn't come close to "Wuthering Heights," in my opinion (Emily was SO the better Bronte!), but it definitely stands on its own as one of the first truly feminist novels ever written.
A "Regular People" Review
OK, I'm no smarter than you are, and I read Jane Eyre and thought it was great.The book has so many themes to it, its not just about love, or money, or whatever- a lot of things are touched on.The main character is someone you'll never forget, just as I write this I'm mentally going over the book and I have that warm feeling in my stomach, thats how I know its a great book, so read it..... and keep me updated!
A Great Read: Compelling and Entertaining
Just to correct some other comments, the present book is only "Jane Eyre." It is not a collection of books by the Bronte sisters as implied in the spotlight comments above.
This is a great read. I bought this Oxford Classic after reading some very negative comments by Virginia Woolf in her polemic "A Room of One's Own." There she thought that Charlotte Bronte had gone overboard mixing fiction with her own conservative views of feminism. So, I was eager to see how bad this book was.
This is a great read and I read the book almost non-stop for two days. It is hard to put down. This was Charlotte Bronte's first successful book and it is her best. I am reading her next book written after "Jane Eyre", "Shirley," and it is not as clearly structured. The present book is similar in some ways to that great classic "Madame Bovary" in that it is compact, concise, and consists of a well formulated plot; and, it has one strong central protagonist. It is a clear and compelling read. By the way, the character is almost the complete opposite of Madame Bovary in terms of morals.
One can quibble about parts of the story since it relies to some extent on coincidence and luck. Those parts lack realism.
The book was attacked by Christians at the time of publication almost 160 years ago and later by feminists. But that is secondary.
This Oxford version has a good analysis. It has a biography of Charlotte Bronte and comments on her sisters. The Oxford introduction by Sally Shuttleworth places the book in histrical context. Also, extra notes are included on the text. I read the comments after reading the book, and the less you know about the plot before reading the book better off you will be.
This is simply a great read.
Three Brilliant Bronte Masterpieces In One Edition - Worth Its Weight In Gold!
Three authors who greatly influenced the direction of the English novel also happened to be sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. Charlotte's "Jane Eyre," Emily's "Wuthering Heights, and Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," extraordinary novels all, comprise this Oxford University Press edition. The people, events and settings which marked these young women's lives, as well as their vivid imaginations, impacted their writing significantly.
Charlotte Brontë consciously tried to achieve financial success from the family's literary efforts. She wanted to make her living as a writer, and her goals were the most professional of the three. Her novel "Jane Eyre," a dark gothic romance, is the story of a governess and her passionate love for her Byronic employer, Mr. Rochester. It is ranked among the great English novels. There are many recurring themes here, some of which are repeated in other works by Charlotte Bronte: relationships between men and women and their different roles and limitations in society; relations between social classes; religion and morality; the need to fulfill the desires of others versus the necessity to maintain one's personal integrity; the conflict between reason and passion, and, of course, Jane's deep need to love and be loved. However, primary to the tale is the magnificent, complex character of Jane herself.
Long before the women's suffrage movement, Miss Bronte created, in the character of Jane, an intelligent, independent, strong-willed female, determined to make her place in the world. Equality between the sexes is not brought up in the novel, neither legally nor politically. What the persona of Jane addresses here is obvious in the following very famous lines: "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
Emily Bronte is said, by many literary critics, to be the undisputed genius of the family. An uncompromising, enigmatic, almost reclusive personality, she produced only one novel and a few poems, yet she is ranked among the giants of English literature. "Wuthering Heights," her masterpiece, is the wild, passionate story of the intense love between Catherine Earnshaw, another intelligent, independent, strong-willed heroine, and the gypsy-like foundling Heathcliff. This novel, however, is much more than a love story. "Wuthering Heights" is about hatred, cruelty, delusion, frustrated yearning, deep despair and vengeance. At times its very darkness is depressing and painful. Yet love and faithfulness, which endure beyond death, bring hope and much needed light to this tale; as does a second love story, born from the seeds of the first. The author also addresses the issues of social class here. Emily's powerful prose, its very beauty and energy, make the book such a literary classic. Charlotte published "A Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" in 1850, in which she explained the morbidity of Emily's work by referring to the "horror of great darkness" in her life.
Of the three extraordinarily gifted Brontë sisters, Anne has been judged the least talented. I say, look at her competition, and her short lifespan. I also think her novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," about a young woman's marriage to a dissipated, villainous rake, is brilliant. Some of the behavior described in the narrative is apparently taken from events which Anne witnessed when she worked as a governess. She openly stated that in "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" she, "wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it." This well written, extraordinary tale can most definitely hold its own against the works of her sisters, and those of other noted authors of the period. Both "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" have been wildly praised for their realism and integrity.
All three girls were born in Thornton, England in the early 1800s. Their father Patrick, was a poor Anglican clergyman. He and his wife had six children. The two oldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth died before reaching adulthood. Their brother Patrick Branwell, was just a year older than Emily. Shortly after Anne's birth their father accepted a position in Haworth, located within the Yorkshire moors, a wide, wild, vast, uninhabited wilderness which was to have a major effect on all three women's writing. Emily loved walking the moorlands with her dogs, so much so, in fact, that she became desperately unhappy when away from home. She was extremely introspective, and preferred the outdoors to the company of her peers. Thus she made few friends. Her intensity of character is evident in "Wuthering Heights."
When Mrs. Bronte died, soon after reaching Haworth, the children were cared for by their maternal aunt. Charlotte and Emily were sent to Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire but they returned within a year. The treatment at Cowan Bridge was very harsh, and Charlotte later modeled Lowood School, ("Jane Eyre"), after it. "The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity." The two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, actually died as a result of the conditions and the sickness contracted there. Charlotte's fiction is full of motherless and orphaned heroines whose loneliness is frequently the driving force behind their search for a place of belonging
For the next several years, the Bronte children were taught at home. They were extremely inventive and creative with their games and imaginary stories. Charlotte attended Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head for one year in 1831, then returned home and taught her sisters. She went back to the Wooler's school to teach in 1835, but after bouts of depression and poor health, she resigned from her position. Again, Charlotte draws material from this experience to use in Jane Eyre.
Charlotte, Emily and Jane collaborated on a book of poems, published at their own expense, entitled "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell." The pseudonyms were chosen to match the first letter of their names. In 1847 Anne's "Agnes Grey" and Emily's "Wuthering Heights" were published together in three volumes. Although her first novel, "The Professor" was rejected, Charlotte's "Jane Eyre: An Autobiography" was an immediate success. Oddly, Currer Bell was identified as the editor rather than the author. The subtitle was dropped in subsequent editions.The popularity of the Bronte novels allowed Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" to be published shortly thereafter. The sisters' identity as authors was at first unknown, even to their publishers. It was not until after the publication of Charlotte's "Shirley" in 1849 that the truth was made public. By the date of this last publication, the Bronte's family life was to be tragically destroyed.
Branwell Bronte, an unstable man with a history of alcohol and opium use died in September 1848. Emily then fell ill and died of tuberculosis December 19, 1848. Anne soon followed, contracting tuberculosis that same year and dying May 28, 1949. Charlotte continued to live virtually alone at Haworth. The three sisters are almost as famous for their short, tragic lives as for their novels.
Charlotte published "Villette" in 1853. During this period, Charlotte also accepted an offer of marriage from her father's curate Arthur Bell Nicholls and on June 29, 1854, she and Nicholls were wed. She became quite ill with toxemia during pregnancy, complicated by the Brontë susceptibility to tuberculosis. She died March 31, 1855. Her first novel "The Professor "was published posthumously in 1857, and a fragment from an unfinished work entitled "Emma" was published in 1860.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were writers destined to have a tremendous impact on English literature. I cannot recommend their novels highly enough.
JANA
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