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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text A. Mary F. Robinson
It was her first of several writings on literary subjects for this periodical, most of them published in the early twentieth century. Her other contributions were French translations of earlier works, including a three-part discussion...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Virginia Woolf
The book's contents consisted largely of already published journalism, carefully revised for the collection.
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. ix - xv.
x
Woolf had put detailed consideration into the idea of making a structure for the book, but she ended by rejecting...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anthony Trollope
The critical opinions he voices here are often cited. Chapter 13, entitled On English Novelists of the Present Day, gives first place to Thackeray and second to George Eliot . On her he voices...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Monica Furlong
Writing of Bunyan's near-universal appeal, MR cites the many remarkable men
Furlong, Monica. Puritan’s Progress, A Study of John Bunyan. Hodder and Stoughton.
13
who have been interested in him: she moves on to the use of his imagery by Charlotte Brontë , Harriet Beecher Stowe ...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
CB included in her collection the well-known writers Hannah More , Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna , Anna Letitia Barbauld , and Sarah Trimmer . Subjects of other sketches which also appeared separately included many of evangelical...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Margaret Oliphant
MO attacks the sensation novel, a genre of fiction which she judges to be low in subject-matter (especially in its handling of sexual material), low in class connotations, and associated chiefly with women. Her idea...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text George Eliot
GE discounts the puffery that women authors receive from critics, claiming that praise of women's work is in inverse proportion to their ability: But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of speech, we...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Rigby
ER thought Jane and Rochester were singularly unattractive
Rigby, Elizabeth. “Review: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="m">Vanity Fair</span>; <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="m">Jane Eyre</span>; <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Governesses’ Benevolent Institution: Report for 1847</span&gt”;. Quarterly Review, Vol.
84
, pp. 153-85.
162
and found the book's prose stamped with a coarseness of language and laxity of tone . . . . It is a very remarkable book: we...
Textual Production Mary Taylor
Joan Stevens published a collection of MT 's surviving letters: Mary Taylor: Friend of Charlotte Brontë ; Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere.
Taylor, Mary. Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere. Editor Stevens, Joan, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press.
Textual Production Jean Plaidy
JP had begun writing some years before this first publication.
Bennett, Catherine. “The Prime of Miss Jean Plaidy”. The Guardian, pp. 23-4.
23
During the 1930s she produced nine long novels, in which she tried to emulate her literary heroes (theBrontësEmily Brontë , George Eliot ,...
Textual Production Mary Taylor
MT 's writing is driven by passion for social change. After reading her friend Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre, she responded: You are very different from me in having no doctrine to preach....
Textual Production Fanny Aikin Kortright
She says that, not being personally known to Beecher Stowe, she has not asked leave for her dedication, but that Stowe 's work for the black slaves suggests she would favour a work written to...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
She followed it up in in her address of 10 January 1913 as President of the English Association , published in pamphlet form as A Discourse on Modern Sibyls, as well as in From...
Textual Production Phyllis Bentley
PB published her first of five critical texts about the lives and works of the threeBrontësisters , The Brontës.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
TLS Archive (19 July 1947): 362
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research.
27
Textual Production Anne Brontë
Although some of the collaboratively produced juvenilia of the Brontë children is still extant, none has survived that was individually authored by AB .
Chitham, Edward. A Life of Anne Brontë. B. Blackwell.
5
In their childhood play which developed into the fantasy worlds...

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.