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Brontë, Charlotte

Jane Eyre, [40] 34; Villette [61] 77

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20190301140929 The Pensionnat Heger garden, Harper’s Monthly 1858 | Helen MacEwan, Charlotte Brontë - Slightly Foxed Issue 61

Love and Loss in Brussels

Helen MacEwan on Charlotte Brontë, Villette

In 2016, in a debate organized by the Brontë Society, a panel of four writers discussed the relative merits of Jane Eyre (see SF no. 40) and Charlotte Brontë’s last novel, Villette. When an audience vote was taken, the earlier and better-known book won, but only by a small majority; the two writers defending Villette had been eloquent in its praise. As one of them said, you often come to appreciate it later in life. If Jane Eyre is Pride and Prejudice, Villette is Persuasion.
20131201110622 Daisy Hay on Jane Eyre - Article in Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

Not So Plain Jane

Daisy Hay on Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre was the novel that opened my eyes to literature. It was the first classic I picked up that I couldn’t put down. I read it from cover to cover in one heady weekend when I was 13: I had a nightmare about Grace Poole on Saturday night, and a sulk on Sunday afternoon when my mother made me put it down to talk to some cousins who’d come for tea. By Sunday evening I was done and I knew, with a certainty I still remember vividly, that literature was my thing . . .

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