Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Illustration of Charlotte Brontë at home, writing with her ailing father in the background. She delights in the dense forests that nestle the estates and palaces of gentry and royalty: “Here the tufted olive, the fragrant myrtle, the stately palm-tree … the rich vine and the queenly rose mingled in sweet and odorous shadiness.” It is in one of these secluded palaces that we find an early Rochester: the dangerously dark Duke of Zamorna. She creates metropolitan cities, with elegant streets and glittering skylines that “rise, soar … the buildings spring like magic”. Set on the golden shores of West Africa, this volume transports readers through the haunted misty Mountains of the Moon – home of the gods – through to the sweeping, “burning air” of the Sahara desert, where the brutal Ashantee tribesman cry out for war. The answer can be found almost two decades earlier when, in 1829, a 13-year-old Charlotte began building a wild, exotic kingdom in Two Romantic Tales. But where did they come from? How did Charlotte, then a single woman living in Haworth, imagine such a passionate relationship? From the age of 10, Brontë devoured accounts of military men, revelled in the sensual, exotic stories of Arabian Nights Rochester’s dark, brooding sexuality matched with Jane’s strong mind and determined nature has crowned them one of the most powerful couples in English literature.

The fiery, passionate dynamic between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester has captivated readers and writers for nearly two centuries. Photograph: The British Library Board, Ashley 2468, f.1v

After 1834, Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of the Glass Town Confederacy, called Angria. Map of Verdopolis, or Glass Town part of an imaginary history created by the Brontë siblings – first by Charlotte and Branwell, and later developed by Emily and Ann.

Emma brown charlotte brontë