Selected Letters from Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Brontë

Paperback

Publisher: Oxford World's Classics

Pages: 273

ISBN: 9780199576968

Charlotte Brontë's letters are our most direct source of information about the Brontës and the life of the novelist. Vivid and passionate, they describe her inmost feelings as well as the world around her in Haworth, Belgium, and London. They offer insights into her novels and the development of her literary style.

'Dangerous as lucifer matches.' That was how Arthur Nicholls, Charlotte Brontë's husband for the last nine months of her life, described her letters. Full of acute observations, pithy character sketches, and passionate convictions, the letters are our most direct source of information about the lives of the Brontës and our closest approach to the author of Jane Eyre. In them Charlotte writes of life at Haworth Parsonage, her experiences at a Belgian school, and her intense feelings for the Belgian schoolteacher, M. Heger. She endures the agony of the death of her siblings, and enjoys the success as a writer that brings her into contact with the London literary scene. Vivid and intimate, her letters give fresh insight into the novels, and into the development of her distinct literary style. Margaret Smith's fine edition includes invaluable notes on Brontë's correspondents, and Janet Gezari contributes a new introduction that relates the letters to both Brontë's life and her creative accomplishment.