Jane Eyre Goes Global

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been reaching readers across generations and languages, as seen by the fact that it has been translated into at least 57 languages, at least 593 times. Matthew Reynolds examines how the novel became a global phenomenon, as well as how translators all over the world approach the text. “What was a thoroughly English book—anchored to Yorkshire and published in 1847—becomes a multilingual, ever-changing global text, continually putting down roots in different cultures. In Iran there have been 29 translations of Jane Eyre since 1980. When Korean is taught in a school in Vietnam, a translation of Jane Eyre is on the syllabus, as an example of Korean literature.”