The ten best love stories in fiction

At the Observer, Kate Kellaway named the ten best love stories in fiction.

One romance on her list:

Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

All the best love stories involve at least one obstacle. But Jane Eyre’s love for Mr Rochester seems fated not to be. The man is taciturn. He is, at one stage, her boss. He seems to be entirely smitten with another woman. He keeps a savagely mad wife in the attic. What’s more, Jane does not appear, superficially, to be a strong candidate for romance - a plain governess with no obvious sex appeal. No wonder nobody ever forgets the victorious economy of the line: “Reader, I married him.”

Read about the other love stories on the list.

Jane Eyre also made the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, and ten of the best smokes in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue