Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, an orphan treated harshly by her aunt and then half-starved at the charity school of Lowood, grows into a plain, proud young woman and takes a post as governess at Thornfield Hall. Its master, the moody Mr Rochester, comes to love her, and she him, but strange laughter and a fire in the night point to a secret in the attic that stops their wedding at the altar. Jane flees, nearly dies on the moors, finds a new life and family, and returns only when she can do so on her own terms.

Charlotte Brontë published the novel in 1847 under the name Currer Bell, and its passionate, independent narrator was something new in English fiction. Elizabeth Klett reads it alone, in about eighteen and a half hours.