Widely regarded as one of the finest novels in the English language, Jane Eyre has also remained one of the most popular.'Such a strange book! Imagine a novel with a little swarthy governess for heroine, and a middle-aged ruffian for a hero', wrote a contemporary reviewer. Charlotte Brontë had concluded that publishers preferred the 'wild, wonderful, and thrilling' to the 'plain and homely' when her first novel, The Professor, was rejected. Certainly Jane Eyre contains much that is 'thrilling', and equally certainly it was welcomed by publishers and public alike. The first edition in 1847 was followed by a second and third in quick succession, and had already reached a fifth edition before Mrs Gaskell's Life of the author in 1857 stimulated such an interest that 35,000 copies of Jane Eyre were printed in two years.