A plain, poor governess falls in love with her employer and discovers what he keeps locked on the third floor. Charlotte Brontë published it as Currer Bell because reviewers judged women's books by different rules; when the secret came out, the same critics who had praised its power called it coarse. The book is written in the first person and addresses the reader directly, which in 1847 was itself a kind of insolence. Its 60 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.