The Brontės: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family

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Open Road Media, Aug 7, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 1184 pages
A “brilliant” biography of the Brontė family, dispelling popular myths and revealing the true story of Emily, Anne, Charlotte, and their father (The Independent on Sunday).
 
The tragic story of the Brontė family has been told many times: the half-mad, repressive father; the drunken, drug-addicted brother; wildly romantic Emily; unrequited Anne; and “poor Charlotte.” But is any of it true? These caricatures of the popular imagination were created by amateur biographers like Elizabeth Gaskell who were more interested in lurid tales than genuine scholarship.
 
Juliet Barker’s landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontės. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling—but true. Based on firsthand research among all the Brontė manuscripts and among contemporary historical documents never before used by Brontė biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable.
 
The Brontės is a revolutionary picture of the world’s favorite literary family.
 
 

Contents

Preface to the second edition
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
An Ambitious
The Promised Land
Good Neighbours and Kind Friends
A Stranger in a Strange Land
A Wish for Wings
Isolated in the Midst of Numbers
Monsieur Heger
Mrs Robinson
The Book of Rhymes
Three Tales
The Shadow in the House
Stripped and Bereaved

CharityChildren
Scribblemania
Emulation Rewarded
Angrians Arise
9
The Infernal World
Losing Battles
Slavery
Patrick Boanerges
13
No Longer Invisible
The Society of Clever People
Running Away From Home
Villette
Tomkins Triumphant
So Happy
Saintliness Treason and Plot
The End of
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Juliet Barker, author of Agincourt and other critically acclaimed works of history and biography, has a PhD in history from Oxford University and was for six years a curator of the Brontė Parsonage Museum at Haworth. She has been involved with all recent research into the Brontės and has made many major new finds that are revealed for the first time in this book.

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