Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.[citation needed] Primarily a bildungsroman, Jane Eyre follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of Thornfield Hall. The focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility, and Jane Eyre revolutionised the art of fiction in the way that all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry. Charlotte Brontë has been called the 'first historian of the private consciousness' and the literary ancestor of writers like Proust and Joyce. The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism.