The Bronte Myth

Description

This intriguing 'afterlife' explores one of the great legends of literary history, beginning with Charlotte Bronte's first attempts to mould her own and her sisters' public image and following the Brontes through their many reincarnations at the hands of their biographers (as well as playwrights, filmmakers, novelists, choreographers and the designers of souvenir teatowels). Whether in its vividly drawn portrait of the ambiguous friendship between Charlotte and her first biographer, Mrs Gaskell, in its treatment of the bizarre excesses of the Bronte cult, or in its account of how each generation has reworked the story to fit its own preoccupations, this book gives vigorous new life to our understanding of the novelists and their place in our culture. The Bronte Myth is a bold attempt to unravel what Henry James described as 'the most complete intellectual muddle ever achieved on a literary question by our wonderful public'. Witty, erudite, and refreshingly unsentimental, it reveals as much about the impossible art of biography as it does about the Brontes themselves.

Lucasta Miller is a biographer and critic, whose articles have appeared in a wide number of publications, especially the Guardian. She is the author of two previous books on nineteenth-century literature, The Bronte Myth and L.E.L.- the Lost Life and Mysterious Death of the 'Female Byron', and is currently an Honorary Research Associate at University College, London and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

A brilliant and riveting examination of the Bronte phenomenon * Daily Mail * Written with wit and relish, and packed with irresistible detail * The Times * Literary history is seldom related with such a pleasant combination of brio and erudition * Sunday Times * Crisply written and witty - Lucasta Miller sends the reader straight back to the wonderful novels that inspired such hommages * Independent on Sunday * A sharp-witted study in literary reputation - Miller supplies a deft and immaculately detailed tracing of the many 'constructions' of Charlotte Bronte * Observer *