Charlotte Brontë

Hello! My name is Charlotte Brontë. I was born on April 21st, 1816, in a village called Thornton in Yorkshire, England. Not long after, my family moved to a house known as the Haworth Parsonage, which stood beside the wild and windy moors. I was one of six children. I had two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, and three younger siblings, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. We didn't have the toys you have today, so we had to invent our own fun. We would spend countless hours writing stories together, creating amazing imaginary worlds like our famous one, Angria. It was a land filled with brave soldiers and exciting adventures. We were truly a family of storytellers.

In 1824, when I was eight years old, my sisters and I were sent away to a boarding school for the daughters of clergymen. It was not a happy place. The rooms were cold, the rules were very strict, and the food was often barely enough to eat. While we were there, a terrible sickness swept through the school. My two beloved older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, became very ill and passed away. It was a time of great sadness and heartbreak for our family. The memories of that school stayed with me my whole life, and I later used them to describe a similar place in my most famous book.

After I finished my schooling, I knew I had to find a way to earn a living. Between the years 1839 and 1841, I found work as a governess, which is a teacher who lives with a wealthy family to educate their children. It was often lonely work, and I deeply missed my home on the moors and my family. However, being a governess allowed me to see a different side of life, and I carefully tucked away all my observations and experiences to use in my future stories. My sisters and I held onto a shared dream of one day opening our very own school. To prepare for this, my sister Emily and I traveled to the city of Brussels in 1842 to improve our French and German.

Our dream of starting a school never came true, but we still held on to our greatest ambition: becoming published writers. During the 1840s, it was very unusual for women to be authors, and they were often not taken seriously. So, my sisters and I devised a clever plan. We decided to write under pen names that sounded like they belonged to men. I chose the name Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell, and Anne was Acton Bell. In 1846, we saved up our own money and published a book of our collected poetry. Almost no one bought it, but seeing our words printed in a real book felt like a huge victory and encouraged us to keep going.

I refused to give up on my dream. I began writing a novel about a young governess who was not beautiful in the traditional sense, but was intelligent, brave, and full of passion. Her name was Jane Eyre. I sent my finished story to a publisher, and to my delight, they loved it! My book, Jane Eyre, was published on October 19th, 1847, under my pen name, Currer Bell. It became a massive success almost immediately. Readers were fascinated by a heroine like Jane, who wasn't afraid to speak her mind and demand respect. Eventually, the public discovered that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were actually three sisters from a quiet country parsonage, and they were very surprised.

Even though I found success as an author, my life was also marked by deep sadness. In a short time between 1848 and 1849, my dear siblings Branwell, Emily, and Anne all passed away, leaving me as the last of my siblings. I continued to write, partly to honor their memory and partly because I still had stories inside me that I needed to tell. I published two more novels, Shirley and Villette. In 1854, I found happiness when I married a kind man named Arthur Bell Nicholls.

I lived to be 38 years old. Though my life was not long, my stories have lived on for hundreds of years. Today, people all around the world still read Jane Eyre and find inspiration in the story of a girl who, despite facing many hardships, found the strength to use her voice and fight for her own happiness.