Charlotte Brontë's 200th Birthday

A sketch of Charlotte from 1850, by George Richmond

Today is the 200th anniversary of authoress Charlotte Brontë's birth - she was born April 21st, 1816, and in 1847, she gave the world her masterpiece,  Jane Eyre. Living a rather secluded life in Yorkshire with a clergyman father, a widower, she and her younger sisters Emily and Anne turned their hands to their passion - writing. Their first book was a group endeavor, a collection of poems, which they published under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Charlotte later explained how their literary careers originated:
About five years ago, my two sisters and myself, after a somewhat prolonged period of separation, found ourselves re-united, and at home. Resident in a remote district, where education had made little progress, and where, consequently, there was no inducement to seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle, we were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had known from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition; formerly we used to show each other what we wrote, but of late years, this habit of communication and consultation had been discontinued; hence, it ensued, that we were mutually ignorant of the progress we might respectively have made.
One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me -- a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music-- melancholy, and elevating.
My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed; it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication. I knew, however, that a mind like hers could not be without some latent spark of honourable ambition, and refused to be discouraged in my attempts to fan that spark to flame.
Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily's had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that those verses, too, had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.
We had very early established the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and consistency: it took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because -- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine"-- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.
The bringing out of our little book was hard work. As was to be expected, neither we nor our poems were at all wanted; but for this we had been prepared at the outset; though inexperienced ourselves, we had read the experience of others. 

For the rest of this piece, see Charlotte's Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell - Bio Notice

The girls' brother Branwell, a painter and an alcoholic, died in 1848, as did Emily; Anne followed them a year later. The girls are supposed to have succumbed to tuberculosis, Branwell to a combination of that disease, laudanum or opium, and liquor. He was also something of a writer, though his works are overshadowed by those of his siblings. Charlotte was left to tend to her sickly father. In June of 1854, aged thirty-eight, she married his curate Arthur Bell Nicholls, but unfortunately, on March 31, 1855, she died, perhaps while pregnant; one of her letters hints at this. Her death certificate states the cause as tuberculosis, though some sources suggest it may have been pneumonia. In any case, the world lost a truly gifted authoress, but I, for one, am very glad she was born.

P.S. - My four favorite screen adaptations of Jane Eyre are the 1943 version starring Joan Fontaine, the 1970 film with Susannah York, the 1996 adaptation with Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the 1997 version with Samantha Morton. I recommend them all!

An illustration from Jane Eyre by C. E. Brock