Charlotte Bronte's novels, dealing with governesses, schools, Belgium and Yorkshire, are popularly supposed to be based on her life, for she was a governess in Yorkshire and a teacher and pupil in Belgium. There is a strange gap, however, between the fierce passion of the novels and the sad drabness of her life, brightened by the startling success of Jane Eyre , but almost immediately darkened by the deaths of her brother and two sisters. This collection of Sayings, taken from her letters, poems and novels, is designed to reflect these contrasts.