Charlotte Brontë's Heroine Series

Erin Blakemore's The Heroine's Bookshelf will be published next October (October 19, 2010) by Harper Collins. According to the publisher's website:

The Heroine's Bookshelf
Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder
Erin Blakemore

The literary canon is filled with intelligent, feisty, never-say-die heroines, and legendary female authors. Like today’s women, they too placed a premium on personality, spirituality, career, sisterhood, and family. When their backs were against the wall, characters like Scarlett O’Hara, Jo March, Jane Eyre, and Elizabeth Bennet fought back—sometimes with words, sometimes with gritty actions. Their commonsense decisions resonate even more powerfully in a world where women are forced to return to the basics, paring down and shoring up their resources for what lies ahead.

In this compelling book of beloved heroines and the remarkable writers who created them, Erin Blakemore explores how the pluck and dignity of literary characters such as Scout Finch and Jo March can inspire women today. She divides these legendary characters into chapters that pair each with their central quality—Anne Shirley is associated with irrepressible “Happiness,” while Scarlett O’Hara personifies “Fight.” Each chapter includes insights into the authors’ lives, revealing how their own strengths informed their timeless characters. From Zora Neale Hurston to Colette, Laura Ingalls Wilder to Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen to Alice Walker, here are some of the most cherished authors and the characters whose incredible spirit continues to inspire readers everywhere.

The section devoted to Jane Eyre is Steadfastness: Jane Eyre.

If you cannot wait to read it, the author is publishing on her blog (The Heroine's Bookshelf) a series of posts fictionalizing Charlotte's first visit to her publisher in London:

Charlotte Brontë in London (Heroine Mini-Series, Part 1)
This is the story of a woman whose work was lambasted as unchristian, immoral, anything but the work of an upstanding lady. She was nervous in temperament and given to moody depression and moments of utter despair, sadness that the unfettered moors of her childhood home heightened. She wore spectacles and had ruddy cheeks and a few missing teeth. And she gave us Jane Eyre, another plain, poor woman who changed the world.
This was Charlotte Brontë, and she’s been on my mind recently for many reasons. (Read more)

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre