Jane Eyre is a wildly emotional romance with a lonely heroine and a tormented Byronic hero, pathetic orphans, dark secrets, and a madwoman in the attic. When it was published in 1847, it was a great popular success. The power of the writing, the masterly handling of the narrative, and the boldly realistic style were much admired. But many found it difficult to believe that Currer Bell, the pseudonymous author, was Charlotte Brontë, a young woman from a bleak Yorkshire parsonage.     Time has served Jane Eyre well. Charlotte Brontë's social commentary still fascinates; the novel is still powerful, full of erotic tension, passion, and irony. It can be read as an astonishing paradigm of feminist writing. At its heart is the assertion that a woman has the right to be independent, and its insistence on that fact and on the equality of the sexes makes it a truly revolutionary work of art. Above all, Jane Eyre is a marvelous love story, as affecting as any in fiction.    Diane Johnson has provided a new Introduction to this Modern Library edition, which is the companion volume to the A&E television presentation. The Modern Library also publishes Charlotte Brontë's three other completed novels: The Professor, Shirley, and Villette. The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.