Editing Charlotte Brontë (section)

==''The Professor'' and ''Jane Eyre''==
{{main|Jane Eyre}}
[[File:Jane Eyre title page.jpg|thumb|upright|Title page of the first edition of ''[[Jane Eyre]]'']]
Brontë's first manuscript, 'The Professor', did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from [[Smith, Elder & Co.]] of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to send.{{sfn|Miller|2002|p=14}} Brontë responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847. Six weeks later, ''Jane Eyre'' was published. It tells the story of a plain governess, [[Jane Eyre (character)|Jane]], who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer, [[Mr Rochester]]. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Romanticism, [[Naturalism (literature)|naturalism]] with [[Gothic fiction|gothic]] [[melodrama]], and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective.{{sfn|Miller|2002|pp=12–13}} Brontë believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in ''Jane Eyre'' she transformed the experience into a novel with universal appeal.{{sfn|Miller|2002|p=13}}

''Jane Eyre'' had immediate commercial success and initially received favourable reviews. [[George Henry Lewes|G. H. Lewes]] wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit", and declared that it consisted of "''suspiria de profundis''!" (sighs from the depths).{{sfn|Miller|2002|p=13}} Speculation about the identity and gender of the mysterious Currer Bell heightened with the publication of ''[[Wuthering Heights]]'' by Ellis Bell (Emily) and ''[[Agnes Grey]]'' by Acton Bell (Anne).{{sfn|Miller|2002|p=15}} Accompanying the speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Brontë's work, as accusations were made that the writing was "coarse",{{sfn|Fraser|2008|p=24}} a judgement more readily made once it was suspected that Currer Bell was a woman.{{sfn|Miller|2002|p=17}} However, sales of ''Jane Eyre'' continued to be strong and may even have increased as a result of the novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book.<ref>''North American Review'', October 1848, cited in ''The Brontës: The Critical Heritage'' by Allott, M. (ed.), Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974, cited in Miller (p18)</ref> A talented amateur artist, Brontë personally did the drawings for the second edition of ''Jane Eyre'' and in the summer of 1834 two of her paintings were shown at an exhibition by the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Leeds.{{sfn|Paddock|Rollyson|2003|p=29}}