“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.”

English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet. Born Charlotte Nicholls, she is best known as the elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë, and for her novel Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre first appeared under the pen name Currer Bell and was a major success when it was published. It has since come to be regarded as a classic of English literature.