Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë — a book for the night: the opening, the author and a Yorkshire moors trail

On a quiet autumn evening, Jane Eyre is the book to open. It is perhaps the most famous English novel about a woman who refuses to be anyone’s plaything or shadow: a poor orphan, a governess with no connections and no money, who holds on to her self-respect before people far richer and stronger than she is. Charlotte Brontë published it in 1847 under the male pen-name Currer Bell, and reading Britain argued over whether a man had written it. It still reads at a single sitting — a dark house with a secret, the open moors, a great love, and the steady first-person voice of a heroine who tells her own story. For bedtime it works because it holds you not with horror but with wanting to know how things turn out.

The opening

The novel begins with its famous first line, on a grim day in a house where little Jane is unloved:

ADV · A001ONLYWAY JEWELRY — gold, silver and platinumRings, chains, bracelets, earrings and pendants. Delivery across the UK.Advertise here

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

And here is the line the book is remembered for — Jane on herself: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”

The full English text is free and legal: Project Gutenberg, eBook #1260. (The Russian edition of this piece carries our own translation of these lines.)

Why read it tonight

Jane Eyre looks like a love story with a gothic secret, but at heart it is about a person’s right to remain herself with no money, no family and none of the beauty by which women were then measured. Jane passes through her aunt’s cold house, a harsh charity school and a governess’s place in a manor with a locked secret, and never once buys peace at the price of her self-respect. Because it is told in the first person, you hear her plain, unyielding voice throughout — and that voice is what made the book an event: for the first time a penniless heroine spoke of equality out loud. The first chapter is about fifteen minutes read aloud: a grey day, an unloving household, a girl with a book by the window; nothing frightening, yet you know at once whose side you are on. We won’t give away the ending — only that of all the Victorian novels this is the one most often called a story about dignity.

About the author

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 in Thornton, West Yorkshire, and died on 31 March 1855 in Haworth — more than seventy years ago, which is why her text is now in the public domain. Three things worth knowing. First, Jane Eyre appeared under the man’s name Currer Bell: the Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily and Anne — published as the Bell “brothers” (Currer, Ellis and Acton), fearing women would be judged leniently. Second, she grew up in the parson’s house at Haworth, on the edge of the moors that run through all their books; that house is now a museum. Third, Charlotte outlived every one of her brothers and sisters and died at 38, less than a year after marrying her father’s curate Arthur Bell Nicholls, while expecting a child.

ADV · A003We build websites for tradespeople and sole traders — £219Customers see your work and prices and message you straight away. Ready in 3 days, £219 instead of £438.Advertise here

Places to visit

The main Brontë sites are not in London but in the north, in the Yorkshire village of Haworth — a day trip. Addresses and prices were checked today.

Brontë Parsonage Museum, Church Street, Haworth, West Yorkshire (BD22 8DR) — the very parsonage where Charlotte and her sisters wrote their novels. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00 (last entry 16:00); closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Tickets (rate valid April 2026 – March 2027): adult £15.00, 65+ £13.00, concession £9.00 (students, disabled visitors, people on means-tested benefits and residents of BD20/BD21/BD22), teen 12–16 £7.50, child 11 and under in a family group free. A “ground floor” ticket is £7.50 for visitors who can reach only the ground floor. Check times and book at bronte.org.uk.

Haworth and St Michael’s parish church — next to the museum: the steep cobbled Main Street and the church, in whose family vault Charlotte is buried. The moor-edge village itself is the best “trail” into the novel; church entry is free, but check the hours on the spot.

North Lees Hall near Hathersage (Derbyshire) — scholars take this fortified tower-house to be the model for Thornfield Hall: in the summer of 1845 Charlotte stayed at Hathersage, which became the novel’s town of “Morton.” It is now a private house (let for holidays); you can’t go inside, but it is visible from a public footpath in the Peak District. This is the biographers’ reading, not an address from the book — better to say so plainly.

Where to get it

Free. The full English text is in the public domain: Project Gutenberg, eBook #1260. To find the book in British libraries, use the Library Hub Discover catalogue.

Buy it in Russian. Jane Eyre is staple classic in many Russian translations; search “Джейн Эйр” at the Russian-language bookshops in Britain — Notre Locus and Bookashka. We don’t fix stock or price here — check the shop’s site; an English paperback is carried by ordinary British bookshops too.