Brontë, Charlotte

21 April 1816 - 31 March 1855

British novelist, one of the pioneering figures of the immediate post-Gothic cultural moment, primarily on the basis of her best-known novel, Jane Eyre. A powerful study of being, identity, autonomy, gender, passion, power — all these and more. One of the major novels of C19 British literature by any reckoning, it's a vital link in the Gothic's evolution away from an exterior, often horror-based aesthetic to a more internal, emotion- and psychology-based aesthetic. Yet it retains enough Gothic traces to be quite recognizable as a direct descendant: the isolated building, the pursued young heroine, the darkly Byronic hero. But we're a long way from the Castle Udolpho....

  Charlotte Bronte


Sites:
Charlotte Brontë overview
Includes a biographical note, an "appreciation," and a chronology, among other things. As usual with the Victorian Web, a very good resource. [Victorian Web, Brown U]
Biographical note
[Judy Giles, U of Ripon and York; Literary Encyclopedia]
Biographical note
[The Authors Calendar]
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
The landmark 1857 biography of CB by the British novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Brontë Sisters Web
[Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya U]
Brief biographical note
Part of the PBS website for the 2002 production of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.
Brief biographical note on the Brontë sisters a LitGothic etext
[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
Charlotte Brontë's Notes on the Pseudonyms Used By Herself and Her Sisters, Emily and Anne Brontë (38K)
[Project Gutenberg]
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Includes a lot of good biographical and contextual information about the Brontë family, a customizable chronology, and useful brief discussions of the Brontë's various novels. Recommended.
Biographical note on the Brontë family
[Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartleby.com]
Brief biographical note
[Gothic Labyrinth]
Brief biographical note
[Online Literature]
Brief biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Brief biographical note
[Incompetech.com]
Brontë Hyper-Concordance
Part of the The Victorian Literary Studies Archive, this concordance allows you to search texts by the Brontë sisters, including Jane Eyre, among others.
Brontë Country
Tourist-oriented site that provides a nice intro to that part of England the Brontës called home.
Portraits
Includes one of the 3 sisters Brontë by the brother Brontë.  [National Portrait Gallery, London]
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  click the cover image for more info from Amazon.com


Etexts:
Jane Eyre [1847]
- at Project Gutenberg
- at literature.org (Table of Contents)
- at Eserver.org (1MB)
-- Jane Eyre overview [Victorian Web, Brown U]
-- Summary and brief discussion [Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, NYU School of Medicine] -- Jane Eyre discussion/syllabus [Lilia Melani, CUNY]

"Napoleon and the Spectre" [1833]
CB's comic pseudo-Gothic deconstruction of male authority and power structures.
- at Gaslight
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click the cover image for more info from amazon.com


Essays:
"Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë" this link opens a new window
An anonymous reminiscence from the May 1871 issue of Scribner's Monthly, at Cornell U's Making of America.
note: stories at Cornell's "Making of America" project are available in multiple formats (image, pdf, plain text). The link above is to the images — e-facsimiles, basically — but other viewing options are readily available (click on a page number, then select another "View As" option).
Joyce Carol Oates on Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
First published as an introduction to an edition of Jane Eyre. [Randy Souther, U San Francisco]
"Defining Romanticism: The Implications of Nature Personified as Female in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre"
By Alicia Renfroe  [Prometheus Unplugged?]


Reviews:
Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontės buy this book at amazon.com
by Diane Long Hoeveler (Penn State UP, 1998). Reviewer: Deborah Kennedy  [Romantic Circles]
This title is also reviewed in Romanticism on the Net. Reviewer: Lauren Fitzgerald


Discussion:
BRONTË
Yahoo Groups page for BRONTË. This group is "devoted to the lives and works of the Bronte family: this includes biographical discussion, literary criticism, discussion of social or historical issues that are relevant to an understanding of the Brontës, discussion of the novels, movies, television and stage adaptations of works by the Brontës, Brontë related travel: in essence, ANYTHING Brontë related."
"Charlotte Brontë."