I tried to get into this book--really tried. But I've been "reading it now" for over a year, and it's just not happening! Can't say why, but it just never drew me in.

The Secret History of Jane Eyre was a very readable biography of Charlotte Bronte that skillfully connects her life to her works, illuminating both in the process. As a fan of Charlotte Bronte, I was really intrigued by the premise of this biography, and I think author Pfordresher succeeds at backing up his claims with thorough research. I would recommend this biography to any fans of Charlotte Bronte who are more interested in her work.

I have not finished The Secret History of Jane Eyre. While it is filled with some fascinating information about Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte, the style of writing is not very engaging. If I were researching the topic, I would have continued, but with only a casual interest, the text seems tedious.

I didn't love it nor did I hate it. There were some interesting moments especially when thinking about women's station in life at that time and the abundance of illness and health woes.

I was curious about this book because I can genuinely say that Jane Eyre is one of my least favourite novels. Maybe that sounds contradictory, but I usually love literary biographies and close-readings and was interested to see if reading about Charlotte Bronte would give more sympathy to my original impressions of her book. Well, not so! I can now say whole-heartedly that I dislike Jane Eyre AND Charlotte Bronte herself.

The writing in this book is superb, and I found the close-reading and biographical interpretations of both the text and Bronte's own life and correspondence to be very interesting and illuminating. I went into this book not knowing much about the Bronte family, let alone Charlotte's own depressing personal histories, so the biographical details were very interesting - even though I found Charlotte to be quite unsympathetic! I think the real shocker of the book for me was not Charlotte's morally questionable romantic ideals and off-putting visions of female submissiveness and subjugation .. but her inexplicable (to me) friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell! I love Gaskell, and I'm very interested to read Gaskell's posthumous biography of Bronte after reading the snippets of that relationship contained within the research Pfordresher used for this book.

I think fans of Jane Eyre and the Bronte family will find this book very well written and interesting, as the book was clearly written with them in mind. Even as a critical non-fan I found myself enjoying it, which is a good indication of the thoughtfulness and quality of the writing I think!