Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bronte was published in 1857to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the sub-title 'An Autobiography'. It recounts Charlotte Bronte's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work - the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist - explored the nature of Charlotte's genius and almost single-handedly created the Bronte myth.

Abbreviations

Introduction

Further Reading

The History of the Text

A Note on the Text

THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE

  BRONTE

Appendix: Revisions Occurring in

  the Third Edition of The Life of

  Charlotte Bronte

Notes