Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) was an English novelist and poet who didn't live long enough to give the world all she could have, but she is best known as being one of the three critically acclaimed Bronte sisters, along with Anne and Emily, and all three of them wrote novels that are now considered classics of English and Western literature.

Of all the sisters' works, it is Emily's Wuthering Heights that has aged the best over time, continuing to retain its place as a classic of English literature. Anne's Agnes Grey was written as a Volume III to be packaged with Wuthering Heights and was finished within a year of Emily's novel. But it was Charlotte who survived the other two's illnesses in 1848-1849, giving her nearly another decade to produce more Jane Eyre and other novels, including The Professor and Emma.