Charlotte Brontë

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CB 's five novels, with their passionate explorations of the dilemmas facing nineteenth-century middle-class English women, have made her perhaps the most loved, imitated, resisted, and hotly debated novelist of the Victorian period.
Etching of Charlotte Brontë after a portrait by George Richmond, 1850. She is seen from the waist up, seated, with one elbow resting on a table, that hand holding a small book and the other on her lap, holding a handkerchief. She wears a flat ribbon round her neck, and a dark dress, buttoned in front, with lace trim on the sleeves and bodice. Her dark, smooth hair is pulled back and tied with a dark ribbon.

Milestones

21 April 1816
Charlotte Brontë , the third daughter in the family, was born in Thornton, near Bradford, in Yorkshire.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
71
By summer 1827
CB had begun creating plays with her siblings: both secret Bed plays produced under the covers with Emily in their shared bed, and daytime plays involving Branwell and Anne as well.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
151
August 1846
CB , while in Manchester for her father's cataract operation, began writing Jane Eyre.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
508
16 October 1847
CB 's novel Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published in three volumes as edited by Currer Bell .
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
535
Gordon, Lyndall. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life. Chatto and Windus, 1994.
161
7 July 1848
CB travelled to London with her sister Anne to refute the claim that Currer , Ellis , and Acton Bell were a single author.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
557
Early May 1850
CB 's Jane Eyre was re-issued in a cheap, one-volume edition.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
640
Late May 1853
CB began a new story called Willie Ellin, which had elements in common with The Professor; it was never finished.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
731, 734
31 March 1855
CB , Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls, died at Haworth of a chill, which was called tuberculosis. It is now generally supposed that she died because she was weakened by exceptionally heavy morning sickness in her pregnancy.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
772
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin, 1975.
523

Biography

Birth and Background

21 April 1816
Charlotte Brontë , the third daughter in the family, was born in Thornton, near Bradford, in Yorkshire.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
71

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