Preview · Page 1 of 2
Meet the Book
This is the book’s own stage: Jane Eyre herself — as F. H. Townsend drew her for the Peacock Edition of 1897, a drawing, and captioned as the drawing she is — stands on the stage while her story is read aloud, in Amy’s voice. This preview rides the stage, then hears Amy read the opening of Chapter Twenty-seven fresh — the flight from Thornfield behind her, Ferndean ahead. It closes with the most famous sentence she ever speaks — “Reader, I married him” — and the book says so plainly, on its face. The bookstore barcode rides the preview — scan any moment to come back to this bookstore.
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Preview · Page 2 of 2
What’s Inside
- Chapters Twenty-seven to Thirty-eight, the Conclusion, whole: the Disclaimer — A Word Before the Book — then the flight from Thornfield, the moor, the Rivers family and the school at Morton, the proposal refused, the voice on the wind, and Ferndean — her third volume of 1847 entire, carrying the story home.
- About 6.4 hours of narration — Amy reads Charlotte Brontë’s own words aloud, page by page, in a reading room you can follow with your eyes, while Jane stands talking on the stage.
- The book’s pictures — F. H. Townsend’s plates for the Peacock Edition of 1897 — its own frontispiece, Jane leading the blinded Rochester at the Ferndean gate, on this volume’s cover — and George Richmond’s portrait of Charlotte drawn from life in chalk in 1850.
- THE SET IS COMPLETE — ALL THREE VOLUMES — Volume One (the dedication, the prefaces, and Chapters One to Fifteen) and Volume Two (Chapters Sixteen to Twenty-six) are out now: Gateshead, Thornfield, and Ferndean.
Charlotte Brontë was born on April 21, 1816, and died on March 31, 1855 — one hundred and seventy-one years ago. Jane Eyre was first published in London by Smith, Elder and Company on October 16, 1847, under the title Jane Eyre: An Autobiography and the veiled name Currer Bell; the words read here are her revised text — the text of her second and third editions — as carried in the Peacock Edition printed by Service and Paton in London in 1897. Charlotte’s “Biographical Notice” of 1850 is not in this book, and the book’s own disclaimer names that absence up front, where it belongs. The music under the reading is Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat, in the recording made by the pianist Frank La Forge in 1911, kept low beneath the voice. The narration is a synthesized reading (Piper — Amy) of that text, made for this edition. Editor: Franklin Langston.
franklinlangston.gumroad.com/l/diykrn
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