Google has celebrated the life of the English author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, with a Google doodle.
Brontë
was born on 21 April 1816 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the third of six
children. Her younger sister, Emily Brontë, wrote Wuthering Heights.
The
Brontës' father was an Irish clergyman who changed his name to Brontë
from Brunty or Prunty. He sent his daughters to the Clergy Daughters'
school in Lancashire where conditions were so bad that it led to the
deaths of Charlotte's elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. The school was
the inspiration for Lowood School in Jane Eyre. The remaining daughters
were taken out of school but with their health damaged.
In 1847,
Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of Jane, who falls in love
with her employer, Mr Rochester. The couple marry after Mrs Rochester
dies in a house fire.
In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia. It was an
illness which could have been cured, but she seems to have seized upon
it (consciously or unconsciously) as an opportunity of ending her life,
and after a lengthy and painful illness, she died, probably of
dehydration.
1857 saw the postumous publication of The Professor, which had been written in 1845-46, and in that same year Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë was published.
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