Book excerpt: "The Brontës' gifted biographer provides us with another superlative Norton Critical Edition of Charlotte Brontë's classic novel. For the classroom and for the general reader, there's no better way to experience the context in which Jane Eyre was written, illuminating modern commentary, and the novel itself in an authoritative text."—Fred Kaplan, Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York This Norton Critical Edition includes: -The third-edition text (1848), the last corrected by Charlotte Brontë, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory footnotes. -"Contexts," highlighting Jane Eyre as a bildungsroman through diary entries and letters by the author about her experiences as a student, teacher, and governess as well as her feelings about friendship, love, and writing. -Five major critical interpretations by Virginia Woolf, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Susan Meyer, Carla Kaplan, and Kelly A. Marsh. -A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography