This is a fun and engaging way to explore the life of one of the most important authors of English literature. Since authorial context is important when studying literature, this text will allow students to learn about this without having to read long biographies about Bronte.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

"Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre" is an exquisite graphic biography that offers an intimate look at the author's life before she wrote her masterpiece.
Through beautiful illustrations and eloquent narrative, the book takes us to Victorian England, where Charlotte grew up in a family that valued literature and creativity. However, her childhood was also marked by tragedy, including the death of her older sisters and her separation from her twin brother.
The author sensitively explores how these early experiences shaped Charlotte's personality and literary vision. It also shows us how her adult life, including her short career as a teacher and her stay at a hostile school, shaped her worldview and personal beliefs.
With an elegant graphic style and an intelligent narrative, "Charlotte Brontë before Jane Eyre" is a masterpiece celebrating the life and work of one of the most influential writers in history. It is a book that I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in literature, history or the lives of women in the past.

This was a really fun graphic novel on the life of Charlotte Bronte. As a writer, I love reading stories about famous authors, and the fact that this was a graphic novel made me so much more excited for it.

Received a digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

I have loved Charlotte Bronte since high school. Any biography I can find about her or background to Jane Eyre, I seek out. While this is written for children, I really enjoyed it. The graphic novel nature of it was also something new to experience.

A captivating recounting of the life and traits of a remarkable write, Charlotte Bronte, this book is a treasure to be cherished. I loved how Fawkes has passed on to the reader, the admiration she holds for Bronte in this lovely biography, in gripping tones, throwing in adulation and astonishment. I loved reading this, and I am thankful to Fawkes, NetGalley, and Disney Book Group for the ARC.

Rating: 4 STARS
2019; Disney Book Group/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre is a graphic novel aimed at younger readers, but I think if you are a fan of the Bronte family you will enjoy this one. We meet the Brontes, and Charlotte specifically, when they are younger. We get to see how Charlotte becomes a writer and how she writes Jane Eyre. The illustrations are well done and make this a must have for bookshelves.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***

Loved this graphic novel about the life of Charlotte Bronte as well as her family. Charlotte is definitely the sister I am fascinated by and really appreciated the way the author/illustrator wove in her research about this amazing writer. I am now drawn to read many of the biographies that the author consulted in order to write and illustrate this book!

This story was very interesting. I liked learning about Charlotte’s life and the people who have inspired her to write. The artwork was very pretty and made her story come alive! I recommend this for those that would like to read a light book on the Brontes!

Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite books. It is a classic, beloved story. It is hard to compare a short graphic novel to a classic piece of literature. I enjoyed the illustrations but it just couldn't compare to the original.

This was a pretty good book. I wasn't really excepting to learn much but I actually did! There were a lot of facts about her life, which I enjoyed. I also really enjoyed the artwork in this. I feel like this is a good intro to Charlotte Bronte if someone doesn't know who she is or hasn't really read any of her works. Overall, I think this is a pretty solid book and I would recommend it to people who are interested in Charlotte Bronte.

I've been trying to beef up my library's nonfiction graphic novel collections, and this was just the thing to help! It's not my favorite of the graphic biographies from Center for Cartoon Studies, but it does its job and the art is quite nice.

Sadly I couldn't read this book in the format it was sent, I would have liked to have been made aware it wasn't available via kindle as most other requests are.

I have never read a Charlotte Bronte book in my life. I do have the Bronte sisters books on my TBR's and am just intimidated by them and this graphic novel has made me more intrigued of the novels. I loved learning about how Charlotte and her sisters became writers. I thought it was funny that they did not like children one bit and yet they only had the options of becoming a teacher or a governess.

It was okay. Not a huge fan of the illustrations, so that kind of threw everything off for me. Although I learned some new things about Charlotte Bronte, I basically had to force myself to keep going until I finished.

Ahhh, this graphic novel was a breath of fresh air. As one of my beloved authors, I really enjoy learning new information about Charlotte Brontë, so Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre was the perfect graphic novel for me to pick up. Moreover, Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book, so I was excited to read a new medium source that explores Charlotte Brontë life and her journey to writing it. 

Filled with black and white pages muted with grayish blue water-colored tones, Fawkes explores the hardships of the Brontë family, including illnesses, deaths, poverty, and Charlotte's very fierce determination to become a respected author. Not only is Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre set up as a bildungsroman like Charlotte's treasured Jane Eyre, but this graphic novel also provides vivid detailed life events, which beautifully parallel Charlotte's own life and experiences with scenes and themes of her own novels. 

Additionally, in Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre, Fawkes dedicates a few pages to "Panel Discussions," which provide more in-depth conversations regarding historical and factual background of Charlotte's life. I loved these little snippets and the new information it added to my Brontë knowledge. Overall, if you are fan of the Brontës and Jane Eyre, I highly recommend that you add Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre to your to-read collection soon.

I read this as part of a blog tour for Rockstar Book Tours and it did not disappoint! I am a huge fan of graphic novels so I jumped at the opportunity to read this and was so glad that I did. Glynnis Fawkes did a fantastic job of not only portraying Charlotte's life prior to writing Jane Eyre, but she also created such beautiful illustrations. I adore her drawing style and I think it made my reading experience much more enjoyable. I'll admit that had this been a regular novel about Charlotte's life I might have been weary to pick it up because I am personally not a fan of reading books that are completely factual. This is because I am mostly a reader of fiction. Having this written in graphic novel form made me more interested in picking it up and I honestly think it will be more intriguing to younger readers as well for this very reason. The pictures and few words on each page allow you to move through the novel at a faster pace than you would reading a non-graphic novel, and you are still getting a lot of fascinating information. This graphic novel not only includes information on Charlotte's life, but also provides details about Emily, Anne, and Branwell as well.

This was such a fun and quick read filled with details about what it was like for Charlotte growing up as well as her journey to becoming a writer. Fans of her work will love getting to read about her experiences and hardships, but even those of you who have never read anything by her (like myself) will read this and quickly come to love and admire Charlotte for her strength through all of her losses, as well as for all the hardwork and effort she put in to getting her books published. Jane Eyre is a classic that is loved by readers of all ages and through this graphic novel you will get to know how this literary masterpiece came to be.

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney-Hyperion for providing me the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of this book!

I think it fair to say Glynnis Fawkes’ Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre will find an audience in those already familiar with its subject matter, but I feel the brilliance of this piece rests in how it introduces its iconic heroine to its target audience.

Younger readers are far less likely to know Charlotte’s story and I liked how Fawkes’ deft approach presents the material while drawing expressive parallels to both Brontë’s work and biographic experiences. It’d have been easy for blind hero-worship to overwhelm this piece, but I found the story well-rounded and characterized by a great deal of emotional range.

The timeline skips from here to there, but the story is easy to follow, and it felt complete despite the episodic nature of its structuring. Purists might suffer a certain degree of frustration over the modern flow and cadence of the text, but here again, I felt Fawkes made the right choice in opting for a style that invites younger readers into the narrative.

"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart!

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a beloved classic, celebrated today by readers of all ages and revered as a masterwork of literary prowess. But what of the famous writer herself?

Originally published under the pseudonym of Currer Bell, Jane Eyre was born out of a magnificent, vivid imagination, a deep cultivation of skill, and immense personal hardship and tragedy. Charlotte, like her sisters Emily and Anne, was passionate about her work. She sought to cast an empathetic lens on characters often ignored by popular literature of the time, questioning societal assumptions with a sharp intellect and changing forever the landscape of western literature.

With an introduction by Alison Bechdel, Charlotte Brontë before Jane Eyre presents a stunning examination of a woman who battled against the odds to make her voice heard."

Oh yes, let's hook them young! Also for the young at heart.

I must admit from the start that I am an absolute Brontë sisters nerd and fangirl, so when I saw the announcement for this tour, I immediately jumped at the chance to take part. I have read all of the Brontë sisters’ books, as well as a variety of fictional accounts of their lives (one of my absolute favorite being *Worlds of Ink and Shadow* by Lena Coakley, my detailed review of which you can read here), and I was thrilled to add this graphic novel to my collection. Like *Worlds of Ink and Shadow*, *Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre* focuses on Charlotte’s childhood and young adult years, before she published *Jane Eyre*. While Charlotte is the main character, we also get to learn about her siblings Anne, Emily, and Branwell, and the closeness the four of them enjoyed. This focus on Charlotte’s formative years helps us to understand where the story for *Jane Eyre* came from, in addition to her other books.

I kept thinking, the whole time I was reading, that Ms. Fawkes has performed a heroic feat in condensing Charlotte’s story into a mere 92 pages, while including so many of Charlotte’s own words. I don’t know how she was able to do it, but she absolutely does get across the importance of Charlotte’s upbringing and her experiences as a teacher and private governess as it relates to her writing. It is amazing that she is able to tell this story in so few pages and in graphic novel format, but she does an amazing job. The illustrations are delightful, as well, and do such a great job evoking the desolate moors upon which the Brontë sisters grew up, the constrictions upon women at the time, the bleakness of the school the sisters went to (and where their two older sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, both died), and the difficulty Charlotte and her sisters had in getting their work published.

All told, I love this graphic representation of the formative years of Charlotte Brontë and what led to the incredible stories she wrote and that remain such an integral part of the canon today. Whether you are already a Brontë fan or are just learning about Charlotte and her sisters, I encourage you to pick up this graphic novel that is short yet packed full of Charlotte’s own words. I highly recommend *Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre* to any literature or history fan!

RATING: 5 stars!

**Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of this blog tour. This review is voluntary on my part and reflects my honest rating and review.

This is a great introduction to the life of Charlotte Brontë, especially for kids and teenages. I liked that it was a graphic novel, so it wasn't too heavy and boring to read.