British · 1816–1855
Charlotte Brontë published "Jane Eyre" in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell and transformed the English novel. Her story of an orphaned governess who insists on equality with her employer invented a voice—passionate, morally fierce, hungry for justice—that continues to resonate. Brontë grew up in a Yorkshire parsonage with her siblings Emily and Anne, both also novelists, and a brother whose alcoholism shadowed the household. She died at thirty-eight during pregnancy. Her novel endures as a founding text of feminist fiction.