Product Description
Charlotte Brontë famously lived her life in a parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and creative siblings. Claire Harman's biography transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to rebellion and ambition.
Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte's inner life with absorbing, novelistic intensity. She seizes upon a moment in Charlotte's adolescence that ignited her determination: while working at a school in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with her married professor, a man who treated her as "nothing special." She channeled her torment into her first novel and resolved to bring it to the world's attention.
Jane Eyre set London abuzz with speculation: Who was this fiery author demanding love and justice for her plain heroine? Charlotte Brontë's blazingly intelligent women with hidden passions would transform English literature.
Charlotte Brontë is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time. Shaped by Charlotte’s lifelong struggle to claim love for herself, Harman's richly insightful biography offers readers many of the pleasures of Brontë's own work.
Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte's inner life with absorbing, novelistic intensity. She seizes upon a moment in Charlotte's adolescence that ignited her determination: while working at a school in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with her married professor, a man who treated her as "nothing special." She channeled her torment into her first novel and resolved to bring it to the world's attention.
Jane Eyre set London abuzz with speculation: Who was this fiery author demanding love and justice for her plain heroine? Charlotte Brontë's blazingly intelligent women with hidden passions would transform English literature.
Charlotte Brontë is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time. Shaped by Charlotte’s lifelong struggle to claim love for herself, Harman's richly insightful biography offers readers many of the pleasures of Brontë's own work.
Reviews/Praise
"James’ cultured British accent is the perfect match to Harman’s intriguing biography of Charlotte Brontë. . . . James does a fine job . . . shifting easily into flawless French when needed. She reads the letters with warmth and concern, and her rendering of the passages from the Brontës’ collective works are especially effective." —Booklist
"An extraordinary book, crammed with scholarship and glittering with trivia...Harman's book offers so many delights...This is a fantastic compendium, the tone calm and impartial despite severe provocation." —Independent on Sunday on Jane's Fame
"A shrewd but unstuffy critic, Harman's prose rings with good sense, affection and humour...[ She] manages to be not only scholarly, but indecently entertaining." —Daily Mail on Jane's Fame
"Harman charts its course with wit and style, as well as scholarly precision." —Mark Bostridge for the Literary Review on Jane's Fame
"There is no doubt that Harman is the first to treat this fascinating subject in an accessible, lively manner unshackled by academic jargon. It's the quality of the insights and the interpretations that make this book such a good read." —Sunday Telegraph on Jane's Fame
"Rich and colourful...Harman's book is a delight from beginning to end...This superb biography not only handles the familiar material with flair but goes further than previous biographies." —Sunday Times on Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography
"Superbly readable...she has excellent taste...a marvellous and eventful read." —Evening Standard on Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography