Charlotte, the debut novel by Elizabeth Ferris, is a historical reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s life during the turbulent year she wrote Jane Eyre. Facing rejection from publishers, financial pressures, and expectations that women abandon their literary ambitions, Brontë refuses to surrender her dream of becoming a novelist.
Ferris is a writer and writing teacher based in West Virginia. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and has taught at the Studio School at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Richmond Young Writers.
Charlotte will be published by William Morrow on April 6, 2027, and is available for pre-order now!
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Charlotte, designed by Elsie Lyons. Below, Ferris discusses drawing inspiration from the Brontë Parsonage Museum, incorporating the tools of Charlotte Brontë’s writing life, and how a simple ink blot captures the determination and frustration of one of literature’s most celebrated authors.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
So much of writing Charlotte was about trying to live inside Charlotte Brontë’s head—seeing through her eyes, feeling through her consciousness. I think I didn’t dare conceive of a cover for fear it would break that spell, make me too self-conscious to take on the task of embodying such an iconic and mused-about author.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
My editor, Jen, and her assistant Katie asked me to pull together some examples of recent covers I liked, as well as tell them anything I didn’t want in a cover. As a first time author, I was not expecting to be invited to have this much input—it was exciting, but also a bit daunting! We knew we wanted to have some element that gestured at the writing process itself—since the heart of the novel is really Charlotte’s struggle to produce Jane Eyre. It was Jen’s idea to feature a quill. The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth has preserved much of the paraphernalia of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne’s writing life, so we were able to use their photographs as reference. I’m not a visual artist, and I’m a big believer in letting experts do their thing, so I really only had one request: If you do include an image of Charlotte Brontë, don’t make her look too pretty or too docile.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
It took me a long time to draft Charlotte, including multiple revisions with my agent. I kept expecting each new step of the process to be the one that made it feel “real”—the first meeting with an interested editor, getting the offer, signing the contract, etc. In the end, it was seeing the book cover with the title and my name on it that convinced me I had really written a book and it was going to be published. There was also something full circle about the experience—I wrote a debut novel about Charlotte Brontë writing her debut novel (and like Charlotte I had a previous, unpublished attempt)—so I felt as if I was joining her in the experience of seeing that effort become tangible.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
I love my cover! I think book covers are a gut thing. Do you want to pick up the book? Does the cover suggest a world you are compelled to enter? The cover Elsie Lyons created feels fresh and feminine, but also like it has the promise of tension and frustration. If there is one word that I would use to describe the Charlotte Brontë I met through my research and that I hoped to make live for readers, it is indefatigable. I love the ink blot that forms the “O” of Charlotte’s name. When I see that ink blot, I see Charlotte—fierce, frustrated, determined. That’s the Charlotte Brontë I fell in love with over the course of writing this book and that I hope the reader will fall in love with, too.
What do you think Charlotte Brontë would think about the cover?
I’ve thought a lot about what Charlotte Brontë would think of my attempt to represent her—as well as all the adaptations and think pieces about her work and life. My sense is she would be equal parts self-conscious and vindicated. She was someone who both craved recognition and shrank from the idea of exposure. Charlotte’s first creative ambition was actually to be an illustrator, so I think she would appreciate the vividness and intricacy of the patterned background. I suspect she would also love all the small details and flourishes that exist inside the book. This would be familiar to her—while book cover designs were not common in her time, touches of illustration and design inside the pages of a book were.