60 Fun Facts About Jane Eyre

Under what pen name was Jane Eyre first published in 1847?

The three Brontë sisters kept their initials: Charlotte was Currer, Emily was Ellis and Anne was Acton.

In which year was Jane Eyre first published?

Charlotte's first novel had been rejected; she sent this second manuscript to a different publisher in August 1847 and it appeared within two months.

Which London firm published the first edition?

Charlotte later corresponded so warmly with the firm's young head that historians have wondered whether she was in love with him.

What subtitle did the novel carry on its original title page?

The framing let readers take the first-person narrator at her word, and several early reviewers were sure the author was a man.

How old is Jane when the novel opens?

She is nineteen or twenty at the end of the main story, and about thirty when the final chapter is written, ten years into her marriage.

What is the name of the house where Jane spends her unhappy childhood with her aunt and cousins?

She lives there only because of her dying uncle's wish; his widow treats her as a burden.

What is the surname of the aunt and cousins Jane lives with as a child?

The bullying son John later ruins himself with drink and gambling, a decline modelled on Charlotte's brother Branwell.

Jane's parents died of which disease?

Charlotte probably imagined Manchester Cathedral churchyard as their burial place, having begun the novel in that city.

As punishment for fighting back against the bullying John, where is Jane locked?

Her uncle died in that room, and she faints in terror believing she has seen his ghost.

Which kindly apothecary suggests that Jane should be sent away to school?

He later writes to the school's superintendent confirming Jane's account of her childhood, which clears her of the charge of lying.

What is the name of the charity school for girls that Jane is sent to?

Fees were fifteen pounds a year, which was not enough for board and teaching, so the pupils counted as 'charity children'.

Who is the harsh clergyman who runs Jane's school and brands her a liar in front of the pupils?

He is based on the Rev. William Carus Wilson, the Evangelical minister who ran the real school Charlotte attended as a child.

Which older girl becomes Jane's best friend at school and teaches her not to bear grudges?

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote that the character was 'an exact transcript' of Charlotte's sister Maria, who died aged 11.

Jane's school friend dies in her arms of which illness?

An epidemic sweeps the school at the same time, and the resulting scandal finally exposes the director's maltreatment of the pupils.

Who is the caring superintendent of the school who publicly clears Jane's name?

She eventually marries a clergyman and leaves, which is part of what prompts Jane to seek a post as a governess.

How many pupils are at the school when Jane arrives?

They endure cold rooms, poor meals and thin clothing until benefactors erect a new building and install a management committee.

Counting her years as both pupil and teacher, how long does Jane spend at the school in total?

Six as a pupil and two as a teacher, after which she advertises for a governess post in a newspaper.

What is the name of the young French girl Jane is hired to teach?

Emma Tennant later wrote a whole novel reimagining her back story and asked whether she really was Rochester's child.

What was the profession of Jane's pupil's absent mother?

Rochester says she abandoned the child and 'ran away to Italy with a musician or singer'; he doubts the girl is his.

Who is the elderly housekeeper who answers Jane's advertisement and runs Rochester's household?

She is a distant relation of the Rochesters; Rochester later sends her into retirement after Jane flees.

How does Jane first meet Mr Rochester?

He teases her afterwards, accusing her of having bewitched his horse.

What is Mr Rochester's first name?

Critics treat him as the archetypal Byronic hero: brooding, secretive and quick to spar with Jane.

Jane saves Rochester's life one night by doing what?

Charlotte had already drafted a scene of a wife setting fire to bed curtains in a homemade magazine in 1830, when she was 14.

Which servant does Rochester blame for the strange laughter and other odd happenings in the house?

She is really a well-paid nurse guarding his hidden wife, and her drinking is what lets the prisoner escape.

Which beautiful, snobbish socialite does Rochester pretend to court to make Jane jealous?

He exposes her family's mercenary motives by spreading a rumour that he is far less wealthy than they imagine.

While guests are staying, Rochester disguises himself as what in order to question Jane alone?

He is also said to have a 'mellow, powerful bass' singing voice, which he shows off at his own parties.

What does a strange woman rip in two in Jane's room shortly before the ceremony?

It is the last of the ominous signs; on the wedding day itself a lawyer and a visitor stop the ceremony.

What is the name of Rochester's first wife, hidden on the third floor of his house?

She is kept on the third floor for ten years, and Rochester says three generations of her family succumbed to madness.

Where did Rochester marry his first wife?

Her family lived in Spanish Town; Rochester says his father pushed him into the match for her money and never mentioned the madness in her family.

Which house-guest is attacked and bitten one night, and later steps forward to halt Jane's wedding?

He is the hidden wife's brother; he learned of the wedding through Jane's own uncle, a family friend, after Jane wrote to share her happy news.

After the wedding collapses, where does Rochester ask Jane to live with him as his wife in all but name?

She refuses, reasoning that she would lose herself and her integrity, and slips out of the house at dawn.

Where does Jane leave her bundle of possessions when she flees, leaving her destitute on the moor?

She tries to trade her handkerchief and gloves for food before collapsing on a stranger's doorstep.

The clergyman who takes Jane in on the moors turns out to be what relation to her?

St John Rivers and his sisters Diana and Mary share the same uncle, John Eyre, whose will had left them virtually nothing.

How much money does Jane inherit from her uncle John Eyre?

She insists on splitting it equally four ways with her newly discovered cousins.

St John Rivers asks Jane to marry him and accompany him as a missionary to which country?

She offers to go as his sister instead; he goes alone, and the novel implies he falls gravely ill there.

What makes Jane abandon the moors and hurry back to Rochester?

Rochester later confirms he really did cry out for her one desperate night, and heard her answer from miles away.

What did Rochester lose while trying to rescue his wife from the fire she started?

He regains sight in one eye two years into his marriage to Jane, in time to see their newborn son.

What is the name of the old house in the woods where Jane and Rochester finally live together?

Wycoller Hall in Lancashire, near Haworth, is often suggested as its model.

Which famous four-word sentence opens the final chapter?

Tracy Chevalier borrowed it for the title of a 2016 story anthology marking 200 years since Charlotte's birth.

How many chapters does the novel contain?

The first edition split them across three volumes: chapters 1-15, 16-27 and 28-38.

The second edition of the novel was dedicated to which fellow novelist?

Charlotte's friend and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell later revealed how much of the school section was drawn from real life.

The novel is set in the north of England late in the reign of which monarch?

The story is therefore set decades before it was written, in a world of coverture law and few rights for women.

The harsh school in the novel is drawn from Charlotte's own time at which real institution?

Two of Charlotte's sisters died of tuberculosis after falling ill in its conditions, and the school's director became the model for a fictional tyrant.

Which real house near Hathersage in Derbyshire is thought to have inspired Rochester's home?

It belonged to a family called Eyre, and its first owner was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded room.

What happens to the horse-chestnut tree in the orchard just after Jane agrees to marry Rochester?

Critics read the shattered tree as foreshadowing of the couple's coming separation.

Which 1848 reviewer famously called the novel 'pre-eminently an anti-Christian composition'?

Writing in The Quarterly Review, she linked the book's rebellious spirit to Chartism; Lewes, by contrast, said it read 'like a page out of one's own life'.

Where did the novel rank in the BBC's 2003 Big Read poll of Britain's best-loved books?

Its sister novel Wuthering Heights and Austen's Pride and Prejudice were also in the top twenty.

Which author wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, the 1966 prequel telling the story of Rochester's first wife?

The book won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967 and revived Rhys's career after decades of obscurity.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, what is the real name of the Creole heiress whom Rochester renames?

Rhys sets her childhood on a derelict Jamaican sugar plantation just after the abolition of slavery in 1834.

Which 1979 work of feminist criticism took its title from Rochester's imprisoned wife?

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's book is credited with turning the novel into a catalyst for feminist criticism.

Who played Rochester opposite Joan Fontaine in the 1943 Hollywood film?

Welles had already played the part on radio for The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938, with music by Bernard Herrmann.

Which future superstar played Jane's doomed schoolgirl friend in the 1943 film?

Aldous Huxley co-wrote the screenplay, and Margaret O'Brien played the French pupil.

Which future James Bond played Rochester in the 1983 BBC serial?

Zelah Clarke was his Jane; the 2006 BBC version paired Toby Stephens with Ruth Wilson.

Who directed the 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender?

Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 version had cast William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with Elle Macpherson as the snobbish socialite.

Which was Charlotte Brontë's first novel, rejected by publishers before Jane Eyre?

It finally appeared in 1857, two years after her death.

Which sister wrote as 'Ellis Bell'?

The sisters paid for a joint volume of poems under the three Bell names in 1846, a year before their novels appeared.

What was Charlotte Brontë's married surname when she died in 1855?

She married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, in June 1854 and died the following March, pregnant, three weeks before turning 39.

Which American publisher issued the first US edition in January 1848?

The American magazine The Nineteenth Century defended the book against charges of immorality, saying it had 'palsied the talons of mercenary criticism'.

Which beautiful heiress does St John Rivers secretly love but refuse as unfit for missionary life?

She is the patron of the village school where Jane teaches, and adores the aloof clergyman in return.

Starving on the moor, what does Jane try and fail to trade for food?

She had left her bundle on the coach and collapses on the Rivers' doorstep before St John takes her in.