Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Jane Eyre | 1847 |
| Shirley | 1849 |
| Villette | 1853 |
| The Professor | 1857 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Emma (Unfinished Fragment) | 1860 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (With: Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë) | 1846 |
About Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (1816 to 1855) was an English novelist and poet, and the elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë. She is best known for “Jane Eyre”, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, which was a great success on publication and is now regarded as a classic of English literature.
She was the third of six children born to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, and grew up at Haworth Parsonage. Her mother died when Charlotte was five. Three years later she was sent with three of her sisters to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, where her two elder sisters fell ill and died shortly afterwards. She later used the school as the model for Lowood in “Jane Eyre”. She went on to be a pupil and then a teacher at Roe Head School in Mirfield, worked briefly as a governess, and in 1842 went to the Heger Pensionnat in Brussels, first as a student and then as a teacher.
In 1846 the three sisters paid to publish a collection of poems as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold. Charlotte’s first novel, “The Professor”, was rejected, but she sent a second manuscript to Smith, Elder & Co. in August 1847 and it was published soon afterwards. “Jane Eyre” follows a plain young woman from a troubled childhood to a post as governess in a secluded Yorkshire mansion, where she falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester.
While she was writing “Shirley”, Branwell, Emily and Anne all died within eight months of each other. The novel, which deals with industrial unrest and the role of women in society, appeared in October 1849. “Villette” (1853), the last novel published in her lifetime, draws on her time in Brussels and follows Lucy Snowe, who travels abroad to teach in a boarding school.
She married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, on 29 June 1854 and died on 31 March 1855 while pregnant. “The Professor” was published posthumously in 1857, and a 20-page fragment of a new novel, “Emma”, followed in 1860. “Jane Eyre” has frequently been adapted for film, radio, television and theatre, including a 1943 film starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles and a 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.
Photo: Branwell Brontë, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).