The Day Charlotte Brontë Mailed Jane Eyre to London

On August 24, 1847, a parcel went out from Keighley railway station in Yorkshire, bound for a publisher's office in London. Inside was a handwritten manuscript running to hundreds of pages, sent by a writer using a name that wasn't really hers, from a family address that wasn't disclosed, on the back of a novel that had already been rejected more times than anyone was keeping count of. Six weeks later it was a bestseller. The writer was Charlotte Brontë, the book was Jane Eyre, and almost...