I find myself just as riveted and reflective the second time through, if not more so. Second read, 2022: Reading Charlotte's letters is an Experience, which age cannot wither, nor custom stale (to borrow from Shakespeare). By allowing the Brontës to tell their own story, Juliet Barker has not only produced an innovative form of biography but also given us the unique privilege of participating intimately in the lives of one of the most famous and best-loved families of English literature. A brief narrative text guides the reader through the letters and sets them in context.
The Brontë letters are supplemented by extracts from other contemporary sources, which allow us to see the family as their friends and acquaintances saw them. The Reverend Patrick Brontë's devotion to his children and passionate advocacy of liberal causes are equally well illustrated in what can only be a small selection from his voluminous correspondence. Whether trying to impress William Wordsworth with his literary abilities, showing off to his artistic friends or finally coming to terms with a life of failed ambition, his character is laid bare on every page. Emily's are mere businesslike notes, though these have been supplemented by her more revealing diary papers Anne's letters are equally frustrating, but only because their quality makes us regret their paucity.īranwell emerges as distinctly as Charlotte from his letters. Emily and Anne remain tantalizingly evasive.
Charlotte was a letter-writer of supreme ability, ranging from facetious notes and homely gossip to carefully composed pages of literary criticism and, most movingly of all, elegiac tributes to her beloved brother and sisters. Juliet Barker, author of the highly acclaimed biography The Brontës has used her unrivalled knowledge of the family to select extracts from letters and manuscripts, many of which are appearing here in print for the first time. We share in their progress over the years: the exuberant childhood, absorbed in wild, imaginative games the years of struggling to earn a living in uncongenial occupations before Jane Eyre, W uthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall took the literary world by storm the terrible marring of that success as, one by one, Branwell, Emily and Anne died tragically young the final years as Charlotte, battling against grief, loneliness and ill health, emerged from anonymity to take her place in London literary society and, finally, found an all too brief happiness in marriage to her father's curate. In this selection of letters and autobiographical fragments we hear the authentic voices of the three novelist sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, their brother, Branwell, and their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë. The Brontë story has been written many times but rarely as compellingly as by the Brontës themselves.
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