Charlotte Brontë

The definitive biography of a beloved British novelist published on her 200th anniversaryRaised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors, watching five beloved siblings sicken and die, haunted by unrequited love- Charlotte Bronte's life has all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired.Charlotte was a literary visionary, a feminist trailblazer and the driving force behind the whole Bronte family. She pushed Emily to publish Wuthering Heights and took charge of their precarious finances when her feckless brother turned to opium. In Jane Eyre she introduced the world to a brand new kind of heroine, modelled on herself- quiet but fiercely intelligent, burning with passion and potential.This is a truly gripping and illuminating account of one of our best-loved novelists.

“This is a comprehensive biography to enjoy and admire. Harman writes well and she is a fine and sensitive critic”

Harman's sane, unshowy re-telling is exactly right for the bicentenary next April. The result is a retooled classic biographical narrative, shipshape and serviceable for the next 200 years The Guardian
Finely judged and authoritative Sunday Times Book of the Week
Elegantly written, consistently perceptive...[Harman] succeeds in bringing Charlotte back to life in all her spiky vulnerability Daily Mail Book of the Week
The Times
Harman... portrays Bronte's complexity and dark genius in elegant prose with deep human sympathy The Lady
Superb retelling of Charlotte's story (...) admirably concise The Spectator
Harman tells [Charlotte's] story with quick wit, a sharp sympathy, and a fire and fury of her own Evening Standard
Full of pleasing and piquant detail, scraps of passing recollection assembled from the various lives and letters in which the Brontes featured and from which we might reconstruct their world Financial Times
Elegant, sensitive, beautifully paced and moving. [Claire Harman] has... produced a work that is affirmative, edifying, inspiring and humane Sunday Express
Revelatory (...) adds freshness and texture to her account with original speculations. As someone who once wrote a book about the Brontës' afterlives, few people can have read as many biographies of them as I have. I thought I was Brontë-ed out, but reading this book-which will be equally accessible to someone coming to Charlotte for the first time-has drawn me back in Lucasta Miller, The Independent

Claire Harman is the award-winning biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1989), Fanny Burney (2000) and Robert Louis Stevenson (2005) and the author of the best-selling Jane's Fame- How Jane Austen Conquered the World (2009). She writes regularly for the literary press on both sides of the Atlantic and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006.Her most recent work is Charlotte Bronte- A Life.

'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day . . .' With these words Charlotte Bront began Jane Eyre and changed English literature irrevocably. Now, on the 200th anniversary of Charlotte's birth, Claire Harman's landmark biography provides a bold new view of one of Britain's best loved writers, uncovering an inner life that touched the furthest extremes of human emotion. Harman shows us an intense and troubled young woman from an astonishingly creative family, whose early works were produced in total secrecy. Struggling against the conventional limitations of both life and literature, Charlotte created a new kind of heroine which both shocked and inspired her Victorian contemporaries. Love, loss, ambition and heartbreak: the anonymous author poured everything into her ground-breaking books, but lived it first. 'Harman [is] a master-storyteller in her own right. Her account of Bronte's life is a level-headed, highly readable and always intelligent. A delight from start to finish' Sunday Times 'Subtle, measured. Full of insight into Bronte's fiery intellect as well as the tragic intensity of her experience' Helen Dunmore, Observer 'Three rounds of applause... a superb retelling of Charlotte's story' Mark Bostridge, Spectator

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