Author Guide · Victorian Fiction
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In 1836 a twenty-year-old Charlotte Brontë sent some of her poems to Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, and asked for encouragement. He replied that “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.” Eleven years later, under the name Currer Bell, she published Jane Eyre. She was the daughter of a Yorkshire curate, had lost two older sisters after an outbreak of typhus at their boarding school, and had worked as a teacher and a governess before going to Brussels with her sister Emily in 1842. She wrote four novels, two of them published only after her death in 1855. This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 1846–1860 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Charlotte Brontë published three novels in her lifetime: Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853). Her first novel, The Professor, appeared after her death in 1857, alongside the 1846 Poems she shared with Emily and Anne and the unfinished Emma (1860). Start with Jane Eyre; then read Villette, which returns to the Brussels years she first used in The Professor.
Where to Start with Charlotte Brontë
If you want her defining novel
→ Jane Eyre (1847) — the orphan governess and Mr Rochester.
If you want her most inward novel
→ Villette (1853) — a teacher alone in a foreign city.
If you want history and two heroines
→ Shirley (1849) — Yorkshire mills during the Luddite unrest.
If you want to see where she began
→ The Professor (1857) — the first novel she wrote, published after her death.
6 Charlotte Brontë Books, in Order
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
The three sisters’ first book, published in 1846 by Aylott and Jones of London under pseudonyms that kept their initials. Charlotte later wrote that in a year the publisher had sold just two copies. After the success of Jane Eyre, Smith, Elder reissued the unsold sheets in 1848 with a new title page.
Jane Eyre
An orphan grows up unloved at Gateshead Hall and at the harsh Lowood school, then becomes governess at Thornfield Hall and falls in love with its master, Edward Rochester. Their wedding is stopped when it is revealed that he is already married, to Bertha Mason, kept hidden in the attic. Published by Smith, Elder in October 1847 under the name Currer Bell; the second edition was dedicated to Thackeray.
Shirley
Set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, when the Napoleonic Wars had hit the cloth trade and Luddites attacked mill machinery. It follows two friends: the shy Caroline Helstone, in love with the struggling mill owner Robert Moore, and the independent heiress Shirley Keeldar. Brontë wrote it while her brother Branwell and her sisters Emily and Anne died, between September 1848 and May 1849. Critics were lukewarm, but the book helped turn Shirley into a common girl’s name.
Villette
Lucy Snowe, alone after an unexplained family disaster, crosses to the French-speaking kingdom of Labassecour to teach English at Madame Beck’s girls’ school in the city of Villette. She falls for the doctor Graham Bretton, then for the irascible teacher M. Paul Emanuel, whom most critics see as based on Constantin Héger. The ending is famously left open. George Eliot called it “a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre”.
The Professor
Her first novel, written in 1846 and turned down by several publishers. William Crimsworth leaves a clerk’s job under his cruel brother in Yorkshire to teach in Brussels, where he falls in love with a pupil-teacher, Frances Henri. Smith, Elder published it in June 1857, two years after her death, with the approval of her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Much of its material was reworked in Villette.
Emma
About twenty pages of a novel she was working on before she died. A girl calling herself Matilda Fitzgibbon arrives at a select school, Fuchsia Lodge, where she is treated as an heiress until her identity is shown to be false. Thackeray published it in The Cornhill Magazine in 1860 as “The Last Sketch”. Clare Boylan completed it as Emma Brown (2003).
In What Order to Read Charlotte Brontë
The novels are not connected, so any order works. Publication order and writing order differ, though: The Professor was written first, in 1846, but appeared last, in 1857. Reading it straight after Villette shows how she rebuilt the same Brussels material, first from a man’s point of view and then from a woman’s.
Jane Eyre is the obvious start. Shirley is the odd one out: a third-person historical novel with a wide cast, rather than a single voice speaking to the reader. Leave the Poems and the Emma fragment for last.
A reading path
1. Jane Eyre (1847)
2. Villette (1853)
3. Shirley (1849)
4. The Professor (1857)
5. Emma (1860)
Everything Else Charlotte Brontë Wrote
Beyond the 6 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Juvenilia
1
1 book · 2006
- 2006Tales of Angriafive novelettes from the imaginary kingdom she and Branwell invented, written in her early twenties; Penguin Classics, edited by Heather Glen
The years · 1816–1855
Quick facts about Charlotte Brontë
- Known for
- She is known for first-person novels about women who insist on their own judgement and feelings, above all Jane Eyre (1847).
- 1816
- Born in Thornton, Yorkshire
- 1824
- Sent to the school at Cowan Bridge
- 1842
- To Brussels with Emily
- 1847
- Jane Eyre
- 1855
- Dies at Haworth, aged 38
- Born
- 21 April 1816, Thornton, Yorkshire; daughter of the curate Patrick Brontë
- Died
- 31 March 1855, Haworth, while pregnant; buried in the family vault at Haworth church
- Family
- Third of six children; her sisters Emily and Anne were also novelists
- Pen name
- Currer Bell
- Brussels
- Pupil and then teacher at the Pensionnat Héger, 1842–1844
- Married
- Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate, on 29 June 1854
The red mark is 1847: Jane Eyre, published by Smith, Elder under the name Currer Bell.
How Charlotte Brontë Writes: A Voice Talking to the Reader
Three of her four novels are told in the first person, and the narrators speak to the reader directly. Jane Eyre opens its final chapter with “Reader, I married him”; Villette ends with Lucy Snowe telling the reader that her lover’s three years away were “the three happiest years of my life”, while hinting that his ship never came home. G. H. Lewes praised Jane Eyre as “an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit”.
She built her novels from her own life. Lowood draws on the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, which her older sisters Maria and Elizabeth attended before their deaths in 1825. Jane’s post at Thornfield follows her own years as a teacher and governess. The two years in Brussels, and her love for the married Constantin Héger, went first into The Professor and then into Villette.
Shirley is her one attempt at something else: a third-person novel about a public event, the Luddite unrest of 1811–12 in the Yorkshire wool trade. She wrote most of it while Branwell, Emily and Anne died one after another, and returned to the single, inward voice for Villette.
Frequently asked questions about Charlotte Brontë’s books
How many books has Charlotte Brontë written?
She wrote four novels: Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853) and The Professor (1857, published after her death). With the 1846 Poems she shared with Emily and Anne and the unfinished Emma (1860), that makes the six books on this page. Her early Angria stories were published much later, for example as Tales of Angria (2006).
What are Charlotte Brontë’s books in order?
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), The Professor (1857) and Emma (1860). The Professor was written first, in 1846, but was published last of the novels.
Where should I start with Charlotte Brontë?
With Jane Eyre. If you want more after that, read Villette, which many readers, Virginia Woolf among them, consider her finest novel.
What is Charlotte Brontë’s most famous book?
Jane Eyre (1847). In 2003 it came tenth in the BBC’s Big Read poll of the nation’s favourite novels.
Why did Charlotte Brontë write as Currer Bell?
The sisters published as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, names that kept their initials but did not say whether the writers were men or women. Charlotte kept the name for all three novels published in her lifetime; Villette (1853) was still published as by Currer Bell.
Is Jane Eyre based on Charlotte Brontë’s life?
In part. Lowood school draws on the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, which Charlotte entered in 1824 and where her two older sisters fell ill before dying in 1825. Like Jane, she worked as a teacher and a governess. The plot itself, with Rochester and Bertha Mason, is invented.
What are the best Jane Eyre adaptations?
Among the best known are the 1943 film with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, the BBC’s four-part 2006 series with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2011 film with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) retells the story from the point of view of Bertha Mason.
Was Charlotte Brontë controversial?
Some of her work was. In 1848 Elizabeth Rigby, writing in the Quarterly Review, called Jane Eyre “pre-eminently an anti-Christian composition”. After Anne’s death Charlotte stopped The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from being republished, a decision biographers still debate. Her four letters to her Brussels teacher Constantin Héger, printed in The Times in 1913, showed how strongly she had been attached to him.
How did Charlotte Brontë die?
She died at Haworth on 31 March 1855, aged 38, while pregnant, less than a year after marrying Arthur Bell Nicholls. Her death certificate gives tuberculosis; some biographers, including Claire Harman, suggest severe morning sickness (hyperemesis gravidarum).
Who wrote the first biography of Charlotte Brontë?
Her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, whose The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857, two years after her death.
Footnotes
- Charlotte Brontë — Wikipedia
- Jane Eyre — Wikipedia
- Villette (novel) — Wikipedia
- Shirley (novel) — Wikipedia
- The Professor (novel) — Wikipedia
- Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Reader, I married him.”
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), the opening of chapter 38
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