and Mandeville was in the habit of exhibiting; but there is, at the same time, more graphic power, more earnest human purpose, and a more varied and vivid portraiture of men and things.
Often there are strokes of great eloquence, the more effective for their unconscious unforced manner.
Altogether we can consistently recommend the reader to consult the three volumes which comprise the autobiography of Jane Eyre, at his earliest leisure, and to place them among his choicest favourites. Examiner
Almost all that we require in a novelist the writer has: perception of character and power of delineating it; picturesqueness, passion, and knowledge of life. The story is not only of singular interest, naturally evolved, unflagging to the last, but it fastens itself upon your attention, and will not leave you. The book closed, the enchantment continues: your interest does not cease. Reality – deep, significant reality, is the characteristic of this book. It is an autobiography – not, perhaps, in the naked facts and circumstances, but in the actual suffering and experience. This gives the book its charm: it is soul speaking to soul: it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much enduring spirit: suspiria de profundis. Fraser’s Magazine
What we have to say about this work, may be summed up in a very few words – it is the most extraordinary production that has issued from the press for years. We know no author, who possesses such power as is exhibited in these three volumes – no writer, who can sustain such a calm, mental tone, and so deeply interest without having recourse to any startling expedients, or blue-fire colouring, so prominent in modern literature. We do not know who ‘Currer Bell’ might be, but his name will stand very high in literature. We were tempted more than once to believe that Mrs Marsh was veiling herself under an assumed editorship, for this autobiography partakes greatly of her simple, penetrating style, and, at times, of her love of nature; but a man’s more vigorous hand is, we think, perceptible.
From the first page to the last, it is stamped with the same vitality, and there is a minuteness and detail in every point, which makes this picture of a life true and interesting beyond any other work that has appeared for very many years. Weekly Chronicle
This is not merely a work of great promise; it is one of absolute performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which have been published for many years. It has little or nothing of the old conventional stamp upon it; none of the jaded, exhausted attributes of a worn out vein of imagination, reproducing old incidents and old characters in new combinations; but is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest. The incidents, though striking, are subordinate to the main purpose of the piece, which depends not upon incident, but on the development of character; it is a tale of passion, not of action; and the passion rises at times to a height of tragic intensity which is almost sublime. It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears.
We know not whether this powerful story is from the pen of a youthful writer; there is all the freshness and some of the crudeness of youth about it, but there is a knowledge of the profoundest springs of human emotions, such as is rarely acquired without long years of bitter experience in the troubled sea of life. The action of the tale is sometimes unnatural – but the passion is always true. It would be easy to point out incidental defects; but the merits of the work are so striking that it is a pleasure to recognize them without stint and qualification. It is a book with a great heart in it; not a mere sham – a counterfeit. Atlas
Jane Eyre is a remarkable novel, in all respects very far indeed above the average of those which the literary journalist is doomed every season to peruse. It is a story of surpassing interest, riveting the attention from the very first chapter, and sustaining it by a copiousness of incident rare indeed in our modern English school of novelists. We can cordially recommend Jane Eyre to our readers, as a novel to be placed at the top of the list to be borrowed, and to the circulating library keeper as one which he may with