Favourite novel ever

Charlotte Brontë's recently-auctioned letters are still in the news on sites such as BBC News, The Montreal Gazette, the Regina Leader-Post and Hollywood.com. Closer to home, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner chooses to focus on their Mirfield connection:

They were a collection of letters, written by a girl to her best friend from their schooldays in Mirfield.
But now that rare collection of letters from Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey has gone under the hammer at a London auction.
And they are heading back to West Yorkshire. [...]
The first letter, dated not long after the friends left school in 1832, follows Brontë’s first visit to Nussey’s home and is written in French.
Another, written in 1836 after the author returned to Roe Head as a teacher, reveals her despair and frustration during this period of her life.
A later letter, dated 1847, was written while Brontë was working on Jane Eyre, although Nussey was not aware of this at the time. [...]
Charlotte Brontë and her two sisters Anne and Emily all attended the school, which is now home to the Hollybank Trust.
A Hollybank Trust spokesperson said: “We are very aware of the history of the Brontë sisters and their association with the school.
“We are very proud of the history and know that all three of the sisters attended the school at some point.
“The Hollybank Trust is trying to carry on the spirit of the sisters, by allowing its residents to be creative and independent.”
The collection consists of six letters written by Charlotte to Ellen Nussey, her closest friend. Their lifelong friendship began in 1831 when they both became pupils at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, near Mirfield.
After leaving school in 1832, the two friends wrote to each other regularly and it is thanks to Ellen that Charlotte’s letters, upon which so much of Brontë scholarship is based, have survived.

And now for a couple of cosily predictable Brontëites: Maureen Corrigan picks her favourite books of 2012 for NPR and among them is

Juliet Barker's revised and updated edition of her landmark 1994 biography called, simply, The Brontës, upends the tall tales that have obscured a clear view of this brilliant clan. Barker also uncovers new material, such as a charming 1854 letter of Charlotte's in which she confesses to being talked into a white wedding dress, modest though it was. "If I must make a fool of myself [the 38-year-old bride-to-be wrote], it shall be on an economical plan." 

While Dave Astor discusses 'Author Canons With One Highlight, or Many' in The Huffington Post:

One author who wrote a book that I think towers over the rest of her canon is Charlotte Brontë, with the magnificent Jane Eyre. (I just reread it, and it's still my favorite novel ever.) Brontë's Villette and Shirley are good, but nowhere near as good as Jane Eyre. Of course, the author's early death at age 38 may have thwarted a second, later-career masterpiece. [...]
I deliberately left out authors -- such as Emily Brontë and Harper Lee -- who wrote one spectacular novel but no other novels, good or bad.

Rincón bibliófilo posts about Jane Eyre in Spanish while The Dead Authors Club comments on Elizabeth Rigby's review of the novel. Reflections has posted a poem on Jane Eyre and Helen Burns.