Pan Macmillan has acquired
Jane Eyre Laid Bare, an erotic re-telling of the Brontë Classic from the pen of debut novelist Eve Sinclair. Publishing Director, Wayne Brookes, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Vivienne Schuster and Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown.
It's 1847 and Jane Eyre, an innocent eighteen-year-old, is desperate for experience when she meets her employer, the handsome, brooding Mr Rochester, who soon begins to confide in her about his dark past, believing her mind to be incorruptible. But Jane has a vivid imagination and needs of her own. She soon comes to realise that Thornfield Hall is a much more sensually arousing place than she had first assumed. She finds herself embroiled in a passionate, sexual, sensual romance with Rochester. But his insatiable appetites and increasingly dark fantasies eventually prove too much for Jane. When the secret of Thornfield Hall is finally revealed, Jane is faced with the terrible truth of why she can never marry Rochester. Instead must break his spell and escape him to preserve her own sanity, or stay and be forever ruined.
Brookes commented:
‘When I received the opening chapters of this novel I instantly knew it was something that Macmillan had to publish. The idea is genius;
Jane Eyre Laid Bare is a fan fiction re-write of Charlotte Brontë’s much-loved novel, giving the original an exciting and enticing erotic make-over. The original is full of sexual tension and Eve Sinclair has cleverly explored and exposed the sensual underbelly of a highly-regarded classic.’
Vivienne Schuster and Felicity Blunt said:
‘Rochester and Jane Eyre were always passionate characters; this book fully imagines those passions and melds them with Charlotte Brontë’s original and beautiful text. Fans will delight.’
Eve Sinclair added:
‘I am thrilled and honoured to be given the chance to write J
ane Eyre Laid Bare for Pan Macmillan and feel very excited about bringing an erotic version of my favourite classic to a twenty-first century audience. I think that readers through the ages have appreciated the smouldering sexual chemistry between Jane and Rochester and I have changed very little of Brontë’s original to retell the timeless story of a young girl falling for an unattainable older man and getting out of her depth in a sensual world she cannot control.’
The author Eve Sinclair first fell in love with the novels of Brontë and Austen at an early age and later went on to study English Literature at University. She has since worked as a copy-writer, journalist and editor and now divides her time between her shared passions of tending her English garden and travelling extensively abroad.
Macmillan will publish
Jane Eyre Laid Bare as an ebook in August 2012 with a mass-market paperback edition to follow shortly afterwards.