reader I married him

As mentioned in early September, October is all about Victorian literature. In a theme tagged #VicTober on Youtube, where I first learned of it, readers are encouraged to read books written during the Victorian period - 1819-1901 if you wanna get pedantic. Furthermore it has to be by an English writer. BookTubers are reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as a group read, but I decided to skip over that as I read a Hardy recently (Under The Greenwood Tree), and had my heart set on reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte instead.

I thought I must have read this book before, at school maybe, but no. I didn't recognise large swathes of the story. I definitely knew that I'd seen a film or TV adaptation because I remembered a crucial, very cinematic, plot point that comes right near the end. Anyways, I enjoyed it. It was slow going at times, as classic novels can be. Some of the language is overly flowery - why use one word when you can use ten. Some of the religious and philosophical discussions and themes left my eyes drooping. And speaking of tired eyes, how small is the print in this Penguin English Library version of the book? And how odd to have a picture of the author on the cover? Anyways, again, I enjoyed the story, though it could have lost 50 pages from its length, to my mind, and not have lost anything of the story. And in Jane Eyre we are given a great female lead character; she's feisty, knows her own mind, sticks up for herself, and sticks it to her horrible Aunt Reed. Hurrah.

 
Charlotte Bronte published, what is probably her most famous novel, and one of the greatest romantic stories, under the name Currer Bell. She used a pen name because she'd have had a hard job getting any publisher to accept a book by a woman author. Her sisters Emily and Anne also used men's names as pen names when they published their novels. Jane Eyre was published on October 19th 1847, so three days shy of 175 years ago to the day that I post this.

There are still 15 days of VicTober to go, so I've lined up another Victorian novel to read. A much slimmer volume this time, at 88 pages some might call it a novella. It's a gothic tale, which always seems appropriate for a Victorian story, and it's written by a Scotsman. I was in two minds about reading this book...and that's the only clue you're getting as to what I chose to read. Check back at the end of the month to see if you guessed correctly.