Charlotte Brontë

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Standard Name: Brontë, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Brontë
Married Name: Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls
Pseudonym: Currer Bell
Used Form: Charlotte Bronte
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Sue Townsend
ST was eight before she learned to read but from then on, although she did poorly at school, she read with enthusiasm. After Richmal Crompton (Just William) came Charlotte Brontë : Jane Eyre...
Education Agatha Christie
By the time Agatha was born, Clara Miller believed that girls ought not to learn to read before the age of eight. Defiantly, Agatha taught herself to read at five. She eagerly devoured Lewis Carroll
Education Malorie Blackman
MB was shaped by her reading outside school. She never entered a bookshop until she was fourteen, but relied on libraries. Early favourites were C. S. Lewis 's Narnia books, Johanna Spyri 's Heidi books...
Education Jackie Kay
In her early years at school in Glasgow, JK had problems with bullies who taunted her because of her skin colour. She retaliated privately by writing little poems of revenge.
“Writer’s ’revenge’ on school bullies”. BBC News.
At school she was...
Education Mary Gawthorpe
Apprenticeship included some part-time attendance at the Pupil-Teacher Centre in the LeedsSchool Board offices. There MG continued with largely the same subjects as at school, with the addition of French, educational theory, psychology, and...
Education Kate Clanchy
As a child KC loved Victorian stories for girls—Frances Hodgson Burnett 's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (or Susan Coolidge)'s What Katy Did, and Louisa May Alcott
Education Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM ) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Education F. Tennyson Jesse
Though FTJ did not receive much formal education, she read voraciously. Important discoveries were theBrontësisters , Jane Austen , and Constance Garnett 's translations of Tolstoy .
Colenbrander, Joanna. A Portrait of Fryn. A. Deutsch.
33
Education Emilie Barrington
William Rathbone Greg , a friend of EB 's father (and according to Martha Westwater the inspiration for Charlotte Brontë 's Rochester), tutored all six Wilson sisters, paying attention in his teaching to the subject...
Education Emily Jane Pfeiffer
Her family's financial troubles prevented EJP from receiving a formal or thorough education. In her own words, education was not within the reach of the gently born who were also poor, therefore I had little...
Education Sophia Jex-Blake
SJB fervently pursued more knowledge, and travelled to Edinburgh in early 1862, where she was tutored in various subjects. Here she became enamoured of Charlotte BrontëJane Eyre, appreciating the novel for its grand steadfastness and...
Education Jean Plaidy
Eleanor Alice Burford (later JP ) learned how to read at four years old: I do feel that books were my thing, right from the word go, she told an interviewer in 1991.
Bennett, Catherine. “The Prime of Miss Jean Plaidy”. The Guardian, pp. 23-4.
23
She...
Family and Intimate relationships Emily Brontë
Two of EB 's sisters, Maria and Elizabeth , died before she reached the age of seven. With Charlotte , her elder by two years, and Anne , her younger by eighteen months, Emily engaged...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Brontë
AB 's elder sisters were Maria (born in 1814), Elizabeth , (1815), Charlotte , (1816), and Emily (1818).
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
59, 61, 71, 78
Family and Intimate relationships Adelaide Procter
AP was reportedly engaged for a time in the later 1850s, but the identity of her suitor is not known. Publisher George Smith records having admired her. He said that Charlotte Brontë , when they...

Timeline

1917: John Murray (publishers of Isabella Bird...

Writing climate item

1917

John Murray (publishers of Isabella Bird and later Freya Stark ) took over Smith, Elder (publishers of Charlotte Brontë , Charlotte Chanter , and Queen Victoria ).

July 1923: Beatrice Kean Seymour's novel The Hopeful...

Women writers item

July 1923

Beatrice Kean Seymour 's novelThe Hopeful Journey set out to show how Charlotte Brontë 's novels influence a young woman's marriage.

1951: Beatrice Kean Seymour published The Second...

Women writers item

1951

Beatrice Kean Seymour published The Second Mrs. Conford, which carries resonances with Brontë 's Jane Eyre.

1977: Elaine Showalter published A Literature of...

Writing climate item

1977

Elaine Showalter published A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing, an important work in women's literary history.

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.

Summer 2005: News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction...

Women writers item

Summer 2005

News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the year, Judith Kelly 's Rock Me Gently, included passages almost verbally identical with passages by other authors.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.