Thwarted in her passionate, secret and forbidden love for a married man, Charlotte Brontë found herself living in a home suddenly imperiled by the fact that her father, the sole support of the family, was on the brink of blindness. After his hasty operation, as she nursed him in an isolated apartment kept dark to help him heal his eyes, Brontë began writing JANE EYRE, an invigorating romance that, despite her own fears and sorrows, gives voice to a powerfully rebellious and ultimately optimistic woman’s spirit. THE SECRET HISTORY OF JANE EYRE expands our understanding of both the novel and the inner life of its notoriously private author.