Friday, June 3, 2016

“Am I hideous, Jane?"
"Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
-Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

2 comments:

  1. :-) I just read it for the first time this week. Admittedly it is not the type of book I normally read, but I'm trying to read more classics, so....

    Unexpectedly, not only did I enjoy it (which I could have well imagined beforehand, with it being a classic), but it's one of the best books I've read in years, being a real page turner. I like how GKC described it (and what influenced me in choosing to read it in the first place:

    "Jane Eyre remains the best of her books [...] because while it is a human document written in blood, it is also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective stories in the world." (The Victorian Age in Literature)

    I also was encouraged more so to read it by this essay GKC wrote on Charlotte Bronte:

    Charlotte Bronte

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  2. BTW, just because I like trying to find GKC connections when I can....I thought you might like this. :-)
    _____________________

    Charlotte Bronte dedicated Jane Eyre to William Thackeray (author of Vanity Fair).

    Now, in turn, the eldest daughter of Thackeray (Lady Ann Ritchie) wrote a letter to Chesterton after the publication of GKC's book on Robert Browning in 1903, saying she was "much interested" by his book, "which recalls dear Mr Browning so vividly to me", indeed "instantaneously more vividly than my remembrances of him".

    So, the daughter of the person to whom Jane Eyre was dedicated had high praise indeed for one of GKC's books.

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