Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Bronte (April 21, 1816 - March 31, 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She entered school at Roy Head in January 1831, at the age of 14. A year later, she went to teach her sisters Emily and Anne at home, returning in 1835 as a governess. In 1839, she assumed the role of governess for the Sidgwick family, but a few months later she left to return to Haworth, where the sisters opened a school but could not attract students. Instead, they turned to the letter, and each of the first published in 1846 under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. While her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847. The sisters confessed to their pseudonyms "Bell" in 1848, and by the next year was marked in London literary circles. Bronte was the last of all her brothers and sisters. She became pregnant shortly after marriage in June 1854, but died on March 31, 1855, almost certainly from severe hyperemia, a complication of pregnancy that causes excessive nausea and vomiting.