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Summary
Summary
The story of the tragic Brontë family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addicted wastrel of a brother, wildly romantic Emily, unrequited Anne, and "poor Charlotte." Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that--imaginary--created by amateur biographers from Mrs. Gaskell who were primarily novelists and were attracted by the tale of an apparently doomed family of genius.Juliet Barker's landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontës. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling--but true. Based on first hand research among all the Brontë manuscripts and among contemporary historical documents never before used by Brontë biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable.The Brontës is a revolutionary picture of the world's favorite literary family.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this updated edition of her landmark 1994 biography, Barker (former curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth and author of Agincourt) expansively narrates the story of a family that left an indelible mark on literary history. The epic volume begins with patriarch Patrick and moves through the lives of his most famous children: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. Despite their compulsive writing habits and creation of fantasy worlds, Barker emphasizes that the Brontes were a normal family, though one that suffered terrible tragedies. Barker restores a rich context to the writers and their works by recounting their education, creative collaborations, and frustrated love lives. Most fascinating is Barker's attention to the pseudonymous publication and reception of the Brontes' first poems and novels. Despite the implicit argument that to understand one Bronte requires understanding the others, Emily and Anne remain ciphers. But with extensive quotations from journals, manuscripts, letters, and other primary sources, Barker has performed a heroic feat of archival research, effectively exploding the mythology that inevitably grew to surround these brief, incandescent lives. While its level of detail and extensive footnotes will most appeal to scholars, Barker's sensitive and elegant writing stimulates genuine pathos for the doomed family. The volume is sure to remain the most readable scholarly standard for years to come. Agent: Andrew Lownie, Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, U.K. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A massive, almost certainly definitive biography that both demystifies and restores one of England's most legendary literary families. In this updated, entirely revised version of her 1994 biography, Barker (Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417-1450, 2012, etc.) completely submerges herself in the world of her subjects, delivering a rich, illuminating group portrait of the real and imaginative lives of a family of writers: the father, Patrick Bront, a Church of England parson, and his children: Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their legendary if lesser-known brother Branwell, a poet and painter. (Two other children died young.) Barker knows the Bronts and their 19th-century world on an intimate basis, almost as if she breathes the clammy air of the Haworth parsonage where they lived. She knows what they read and how they imagined. Barker pays especially close attention to the contemporary journalism, which had a demonstrable impact on the Bronts' own fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal. The Bronts would, in turn, become myths themselves. Indeed, part of Barker's ambition is to save the family from its legend. Her particular nemesis is the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, whose 1857 classic The Life of Charlotte Bront, writes Barker, whitewashed Charlotte's life, ignored or misread the lives of her siblings and depicted Patrick as a cranky, eccentric tyrant. Barker sees Charlotte as a selfish, manipulative literary genius; Patrick, the book's major figure, is convincingly rendered as a dominant but loving father and a pioneer of liberal reform. While not a critical biography, Barker doggedly traces the inspiration of all the novels and, especially in Charlotte's case, astutely matches fiction to fact. A triumph--it's hard to imagine anyone else ever again getting quite this close to the Bronts.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
British historian and literary scholar Barker (Wordsworth: A Life) has, after 16 years, produced a second edition of her massive and insightful work on the Bronte family. In addition to the two new subtitles, Barker has incorporated material from sources published since her first edition. She makes use of Margaret Smith's three-volume Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte, as well as Victor Neufeldt's three-volume Works of Patrick Branwell Bronte. As Barker points out in her introduction, works like those are invaluable because much of Bronte scholarship prior to her own first edition was too often hampered by a lack of edited and published transcriptions. While the new source materials flesh out this impressive second edition, none of Barker's conclusions have changed significantly since the first edition. Verdict For such a dense and scholarly work, Barker has produced an engaging and readable study for serious fans or scholars of the Bronte family and their period of English history. Academic libraries will find this a useful addition to their collections if they don't already own the first edition. If they have the first edition, they should consider this optional.-Felicity D. Walsh, Emory Univ., Decatur, GA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
