The Invention of Charlotte Bronte Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her

by Graham Watson

The History Press The Invention of Charlotte Bronte Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her ABISBOOK The History Press.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Victorian, Books About Books, Literature, British Literature

Paperback

First published June 6, 2024

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Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United)]

A few years ago, I took one of my very rare forays into fiction and picked up Jane Eyre. No, I was not trying to better myself. I was trying to impress a woman. (Good news: It worked! Temporarily!) Lo and behold, I truly enjoyed the novel and became more interested in the woman who wrote one of the classics of English literature. As always, I found out that truth was stranger, and better, than fiction.

Graham Watson looks to illuminate the latter part of Charlotte's life in The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. There are many things I loved about this book, and it starts with Watson jumping to the time right after Charlotte is unmasked as the author of Jane Eyre. For the uninitiated, Charlotte published under a pseudonym for a multitude of reasons which become quite clear in the narrative. By jumping ahead, Watson can slowly reveal the challenges (to put it lightly) of Charlotte's life when the details become relevant. For someone who already knew about her life, it let me skip a lot of well-trodden (and supremely depressing) material.

Watson is most interested in showing the absolute mess that was Charlotte's death and its aftermath. Mostly, we get to see how the two men in her life, who can be charitably described as "difficult", are powerless to carry on Charlotte's legacy while fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell performs an act of superhuman literary resurrection. However, her efforts are not without seemingly endless controversy. Drama abounds.

I particularly liked Watson's prose and storytelling choices. He is liberal with quoting directly from the letters and sources. Most importantly, his own writing is charmingly old-fashioned. That may sound like a criticism, but I mean it in the best possible way. It's as if he wants to make the excerpts and his own commentary seamless as if he was writing in the same time period. As it is Watson's first book, I can't tell if this is just how he writes or if this was a choice. Either way, it was perfect for this subject.

If only Charlotte's father and husband could have been so complementary. Luckily, we will always have Elizabeth.

(This book was provided as a review copy by Pegasus Books.)

[Julie Rose]

I really enjoyed reading this book which focuses on Charlotte Brontë’s later years, from 1850 onwards, and “the scandal that made her”. The main focus is the complex task Elizabeth Gaskell had in writing her biography and the obstacles she faced from her friends, family and acquaintances.
The result is a moving portrayal of Charlotte, revealing her to be a strong yet vulnerable woman but not without flaws.
A compelling read and welcome addition to my Brontë library 👏

[Alisha]

An excellent new work exploring the last few years of Charlotte Bronte’s life and then the painstaking efforts of Elizabeth Gaskell to write the biography.
Gaskell’s “Life of Charlotte Bronte” was published only two years after Charlotte’s death and brought a firestorm down on the heads of everyone involved. Fascinating stuff for a Bronte devotee.

[Boston]

4.5 stars

[Kimberly]

Father, I am not a young girl, not a young woman even. I never was pretty. I now am ugly. At your death I shall have £300 besides the little I have earned myself. Do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?

Graham Watson's debut book: Add this book to your research shelves everyone!

Finally, readers of Charlotte Bronte now have a definitive research book covering the last years of her life (1850-1855). Graham Watson lets Charlotte Bronte's loved ones speak for themselves by including letter excerpts from Charlotte herself, her father and husband.

As the book opens, Charlotte is the surviving Bronte sibling left to care for her aging father, Rev. Patrick Bronte. She also struggles with being known in her own lifetime as a published author of Jane Eyre and Villette. Although, there were numerous obstacles in the way of Charlotte marrying Arthur Nicholls they were put there by Charlotte and her father themselves. Luckily, in the end Charlotte would have her wedding and sadly very brief marriage as Mrs. Nicholls.

One aspect of the book that surprised and shocked me was Charlotte's circle of female friends she kept during her lifetime. Author, Graham Watson includes three very specific women: Ellen Nussey, Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau. Now, Ellen Nussey was Charlotte's lifelong friend from childhood, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the first controversial biographhy on Charlotte Bronte and Harriett Martineau I am not familiar with.

You know that saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Well, unbeknownst to Charlotte, she had enemies disguised as friends who were very jealous of her since the publication of Jane Eyre. Sadly, it was Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau who were the worst 'friends' taking every opportunity they could find to badmouth Charlotte in the press. I will say Harriett was 'evil' towards Charlotte and leave it at that. Graham Watson does a wonderful job giving varied information covering the rest of the lives of these three women up until and including their deaths. There is a lot to learn about Arthur Nicholls as well and you see a side to Rev. Patrick Bronte that I don't think is usually covered.

[Naomi]

"I wish I could set the world right on so many points, but above all, respecting Charlotte. It would do said world good to know her and to be forced to revere her in spite of their contempt for poverty and helplessness. No one ever gave up more than she did and with full consciousness of what she sacrificed. I don't think myself that women are justified in sacrificing themselves for others, but since the world generally expects it of them comma they should at least acknowledge it." --Ellen Nussey, 1856.

Very, very good. Watson starts five years before Charlotte's death right as her mask as Currer Bell is being outed and carries the reader through her final five years and then through the aftermath of Charlotte's death among her friends, family members, and the public. I had no idea how much we all owe Elizabeth Gaskell for tirelessly fighting for the real life of Charlotte to be revealed in her autobiography, as well as Charlotte's lifelong friend, Ellen Nussey. In this perilous world, be sure you have bosom friends.

Also, I am obsessed, OBSESSED with the fact that Elizabeth *slaved* over Charlotte's biography, fighting Charlotte's father and husband tooth and nail, and when she FINALLY was at the finish line and the week of the biography's publication had arrived she picked up her daughters and housekeeper and immediately departed for France and Italy for four months and left her husband to deal with the outrage until she got back. New hero unlocked. !!

[Gabrielle Molyneux]

'The Invention of Charlotte Bronte' by Graham Watson, is more than a biography--it's an emotionally moving portrayal of one of the most mysterious and misunderstood literary figures in history.

With incredible research and obvious devotion, the author has brought Charlotte to life in a way that makes you feel as if you truly know her... and wishing you could be her friend, even on her lowest day.

The depth of insight into Charlotte's passions and the complexities of her inner world is incredibly impressive, particularly considering that the author is a young man. His sensitivity and understanding of a woman who lived and died almost 200 years ago is moving and refreshing.

'The Invention of Charlotte Bronte' is a must-read for anyone who loves the Brontes or classic literature in general. The biography touches on many famous authors of its day, offering a broader understanding of the literary world that Charlotte was part of... it is as entertaining as it is informative.

I purchased the book at an independent bookstore while on a trip to England. This is a wonderful book.

Well done, Mr. Watson.

[Therese Borden]

I thought I knew pretty much everything of importance about Charlotte Bronte but this book provided some new information. This is basically about the myths and romance that rose up while Bronte was alive about her sad life. When she died, there was a tremendous struggle among her friends, publishers, family members and writers to shape the story of her character and life for the general public. Each had a viewpoint snd many an agenda.

The battle was won by novelist Elizabeth Gaskell who knew and loved Charlotte, and ended up writing the first and most prominent biography. Many of the people written about were still alive when the biography was published and many were furious at how they were portrayed. Legal threats ensued. The second edition has heavily edited to satisfy the complainers.

It is altogether a story of fame, celebrity, and notoriety that played out in the 1850s. These things haven't changed much! Public insatiable thirst for private details about artists and throngs of fans who want to tell the story. And some pretty nasty competition among them.

A very good book, highly recommended.

[Nicola Friar]

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is the latest of a long line of Brontë biographies. Detailed and engaging, I appreciate the amount of research that has gone into Watson's labour of love. The book does exactly what its title suggests. It examines how readers' views of Charlotte were invented or shaped, mainly by her friend and fellow writer, Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the first-ever biography of Charlotte. Watson's book examines the legacy of and fallout from the writing and publication of Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). It seems to build on the foundations built by Lucasta Miller in her pioneering dismantling of the stories that have sprung up around the family in The Brontë Myth (2001). Like Miller, Watson devotes much of his book to examining the initial "creation" of the image of the Brontë family in Gaskell's biography, however, he largely sticks to an examination of contemporary responses to Charlotte's novels and Elizabeth's motives and processes when compiling the biography of her friend. Watson gives fascinating insights into society at the time and the strength of reactions to Elizabeth's research and finished book. I think perhaps that Watson's book could arguably function as a micro-biography of Gaskell herself with the amount of information he includes about her life, career, marriage, and struggles encountered during the writing of The Life and following its publication. The most delicious aspect of Watson's book is the depiction of the battles that took place over Charlotte's posthumous legacy from those she loved (Arthur, Patrick), old friends (Ellen, Mary), and literary society (Gaskell herself, Martineau). It's clear that many people felt very passionately about Charlotte and sought to defend her reputation. The Invention of Charlotte Brontë does a fantastic job of capturing how and why Charlotte was presented to the world during that specific period in Gaskell's book. What it doesn't do though is give much time to Charlotte herself, perhaps stifling her voice somewhat. Although, as the book's focus is on the invention of the public persona, maybe that is exactly the point Watson is making.

[Fiona Woolford]

As always with myself , anything remotely to do with anything “BRONTE “ will get a high rating, and this book
did not disappoint,
NB Elizabeth Gaskell (EB) is a constant through out the book.
I have broken it down to parts1,2 & 3.
PART 1
———-
This particular part was a little drawn out, but only I feel for me as the reader as I’m not very good at retaining dates, this happens a lot throughout but particularly in this part of the book. The corresponding letters to and from CB and her acquaintances were well chosen and pivotal to CBs friends and foes. From the onset my own personal thoughts of EG began to change for the better. Not only did CB loose her siblings but she lost her soul companions thus becoming a very lonely and at times a misunderstood adult.
PART 2
————
From the onset it amazed me how so many people who were known to CB sundry became her “ best friend & confidante “ after her death, Giving their own views as to the kind of person she was and at times getting it completely wrong.
It was a great shame that periodical newspapers got several facts wrong concerning her funeral, particularly the spelling of “ Bronte becoming “ Prunty “
However I was unaware of the amount of people attended the funeral.
EG had a monumental task in collating information about CBs formative years before she met her as the only form of communication was via letters, or traveling to personally speak to people.
A lot of comparing letters and conversations proved difficult as there were many contradictions.
Legal issues insured as to who and what EB could include in her writing “ The Life of CB.
PART 3
———-
The opening of part 3 starts with a an article in
“ The English Ladies Magazine “ it’s very poignant.
This was a remarkable ending to an awful lot of hard work on EGs part.After the first publication views about certain facts caused ill feeling and for the next publication, from legal perspectives, a lot had to be either amended or retracted.
I now find myself eating humble pie as I feel EB achieved an informative account of CB given the obstacles she had to manage.
FOOTNOTE
——————-
Graham Watson is an excellent author and his knowledge about “ The Brontes “ before during and after death is outstanding.
Would i recommend it….absolutely
Would I read it again….absulutely
A resounding 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

[Sarah]

This is a riveting book. I’ve been on a Brontë reading binge and ordered it for the library earlier this month.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë might be termed a joint biography of an author and her persona, moving from truth to invention and back again. It covers the last five years of the elusive writer’s life, following her over a lengthy period of poverty, grief, and romantic and professional disappointments through her success as the pseudonymous author of Jane Eyre – and how she meticulously crafted her public identity.

Then, following Charlotte’s marriage and tragic early death, the book explores how her friend, writer Elizabeth Gaskell, took up the charge of compiling her life story. Elizabeth diligently interviewed Charlotte’s remaining family members, friends, former friends, acquaintances, servants, and more, with the goals of showing the trials Charlotte had endured, and excoriating those who’d caused Charlotte such misery.

Arriving at the truth was challenging, given that Charlotte appeared to present a different face to each of her numerous correspondents. The first edition of Mrs. Gaskell’s work caused an uproar, as it showed too many people in a less-than-flattering light.

Based on primary sources, the writing is stellar, and the story takes a compelling arc as it investigates the deciphering of a literary puzzle and the ensuing scandal. Plus, the detail Watson provides for the interactions amongst the Victorian literati (gossip! personality clashes! hatchet job reviews and their aftermath!) is especially enlightening. So is the tale of how two women with contrasting personalities – an introvert living amid stifled circumstances and desperate for connection, and a gregarious family woman happily ensconced within society – were drawn together through literature. Now I must read Mrs. Gaskell’s book.

[Alexandra]

"Perhaps, after all, the truth about Charlotte Brontë was just as Elizabeth [Gaskell] suspected from the moment she had met her seven years earlier: that after a lifetime of emotional starvation and grief, one of the most talented women of her generation was harried and manipulated by the men around her into their serf, that her wish for concord, balance and stability had been exploited into defeated compromise by all those who needed none and, broken in spirit, she crawled, she knelt, then she tremulously stood until the hammer blows of tragedy rained upon her again.

This is a riveting, meticulously researched, and frequently heartbreaking biography. A must read for anyone who has ever related to Jane Eyre's mental breakdown on a desolate moor after a man's terrible behavior. Charlotte Brontë's life is a Gothic novel in itself, and like all 19th century Gothic novels ultimately the mostly truly sinister villain is always the Patriarchy.

[Lynn]

I highly recommend reading Mrs. Gaskell's biography followed by this book for more context about the creation of her biography. It's a fascinating story. I'm sure we owe the preservation of Charlotte's letters to Elizabeth Gaskell's getting to work on "a life" so quickly after her death even though it caused a lot of chaos at the time.

[Mary Beth Umholtz]

Obsessed. Fully sat.

[Liz]

I did take a fairly long break in the midst of this book because her life was just so, so bleak. Poor little Charlotte Bronte.

[Eddie Lees]

Magnificent

As a teenager, I motor-cycled to Haworth, absorbing all things Brontë in the late 1950s, so to read this wonderful book is to recapture many fond personal memories. The author (for whom a bright future surely awaits) has invested enormous time and energy in producing this most thorough story of Charlotte’s life, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s account of it. The reading journey is full of anecdotal rewards on every page. A powerful read and a most rewarding one. Thank you so much Mr Watson.

[Caroline Duggan]

I really enjoyed this rich narrative of Charlotte Bronte's last years and the exhaustive research done by Elizabeth Gaskell to try and honour her friend's memory with truth. The author incorporates so much detail and description without ever descending into dry recount. I have not read Gaskell's biography, which meant a lot of the content was new to me, but even if it had been familiar, this book is written as well-evidenced history and is engaging and serious.

[Yasmin M.]

Temp note until I can catch my breath: This work was absolutely missing from all the written word on the Brontës. GW does something remarkably different, he lets Charlotte speak up for herself. He provides context, and helps us understand and empathize instead of judgement. I am baffled by how incredibly thorough a man could be about what I had always imagined to be the inside of the brain of the woman who gave us Jane Eyre. Graham restores her. And Mrs Gaskell!

[Roisin]

A wonderfully written account of Charlotte’s complex life, legacy, and character. I found it hard to put this book down.

[Sarah Jensen]

Book Review: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life by Graham Watson

Graham Watson’s The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life is a revelatory and deeply affecting biography that dismantles long-held myths about one of literature’s most enigmatic figures. As a woman and a reader, I found myself both captivated and unsettled by Watson’s unflinching portrayal of Charlotte Brontë—not as the saintly, suffering genius of Victorian lore, but as a fiercely ambitious, deeply contradictory woman navigating a world hostile to her intellect and passion.

Watson’s meticulous research and fresh archival insights peel back the layers of mythmaking that have obscured Charlotte’s true character. What emerges is a portrait of a woman who was as calculating as she was creative, as wounded as she was resilient. I was particularly struck by the exploration of Charlotte’s self-fashioning—how she carefully curated her public image, even as she chafed against societal constraints. There’s something profoundly relatable in this duality; the tension between authenticity and survival is one many women still grapple with today.

The biography’s most compelling moments come in its examination of Charlotte’s relationships—with her siblings, her publishers, and the men who shaped her emotional world. Watson does not shy away from the messiness of these connections, and I often found myself pausing to reflect on the emotional toll of Charlotte’s choices. The sections on Elizabeth Gaskell’s fraught attempt to memorialize her friend are especially poignant, revealing how even the most well-intentioned tributes can distort as much as they preserve.

That said, the book’s greatest strength—its willingness to challenge the Brontë mythos—can also be a stumbling block. At times, Watson’s revisionist approach risks tipping into overcorrection, leaving Charlotte’s vulnerability overshadowed by her flaws. A more balanced integration of her literary achievements alongside her personal struggles might have deepened the emotional resonance. Additionally, while the prose is engaging, some passages feel overly dense with archival detail, which may deter casual readers.

Despite these minor critiques, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is a vital contribution to Brontë scholarship. It invites us to see Charlotte not as a tragic heroine, but as a complex, ambitious woman who defied—and was confined by—her time. As a reader, I closed the book with a renewed appreciation for her brilliance and a sharper understanding of the price she paid for it.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) – A compelling and thought-provoking biography that reshapes our understanding of Charlotte Brontë, though at times its revisionist zeal slightly unbalances the narrative.

Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for providing a free advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Ian B.]

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: a clever, multi-layered title. Initially, I took ‘invention’ to refer to the palatable version of Charlotte Brontë – as distinct from the real person – built up with the best of motives by her first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell. But then I saw it could also refer to Charlotte’s literary creativity (inventiveness), and also to the set piece stories she told of her life to explain and contextualize herself for new acquaintances if she intended a meaningful friendship to develop. And still further, to the way in which her fans elaborated the figure from Gaskell’s biography into a yet more idealized and almost fictional character of unremitting saintliness.

Human nature doesn’t change, and very soon after her death, people were claiming to have known her more intimately than they had, and seeing how they might profit by it: Matthew Arnold, despite disliking Charlotte at their one and only meeting, commemorated it with a long elegy which he sold to Fraser’s Magazine; Haworth’s local stationer told Mrs Gaskell he had lost his ‘best friend.’ Meanwhile, Charlotte’s father and husband hardly seem to have noticed anything about her, but were still expecting to be treated uncritically by Gaskell; Watson writes:

It became clear that both men were counting on her discreet and courteous protection from the public and for Elizabeth to elevate them together in the same vein of tribute they expected for Charlotte. All that stood in their way were the contents of Charlotte’s letters and everything she had told her about both men.

I laughed at that last line. Around this time, sort-of friend and bombastic aspiring author Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth got his hands on the manuscript of The Professor and volunteered to edit and improve it for publication! Incredible stuff. There are some fabulous characters here, springing vividly to life through quotations from their letters (and where would historians and biographers be if the Victorians hadn’t been such assiduous letter writers?). I particularly liked Mary Taylor, Charlotte’s perceptive schoolfriend who had emigrated to New Zealand. Commenting on Mrs Gaskell’s problems in writing truthfully about the living people who had made her friend’s life so difficult, she remarks:

I wish I could set the world right on so many points, but above all respecting Charlotte. It would do said world good to know her and be forced to revere her in spite of their contempt for poverty and helplessness. No one ever gave up more than she did and with consciousness of what she sacrificed. I don’t think myself that women are justified in sacrificing themselves for others, but since the world generally expects it of them, they should at least acknowledge it.

[V. Briceland]

Graham Watson's examination of author Charlotte Brontë begins late in her life and career—in 1850, to be precise, five years before her death, at a moment when Brontë's privacy began to crumble.

Speculation was already rife among Britain's literary set; authors Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell were already busily gossiping that Currer Bell, the pseudonym of the author of Jane Eyre, must be a woman. Using both wiles and a sympathetic ear, Gaskell ingratiated herself to Brontë, beginning a cycle, as Watson points out, of Gaskell winning a very private woman's confidences and then sharing them with her acquaintances, then the world.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is less a sweeping biography than a look at the circumstances of Gaskell's authorship of The Life of Charlotte Brontë, commissioned from Gaskell by Brontë's surviving father after he'd read an alarming anonymous summary of his daughter's life and legacy in a periodical. Ironically, that anonymous article had been written by Gaskell herself, in an attempt to capitalize upon their friendship.

Watson tells with great verve the saga of how Gaskell collected her stories for the proposed biography, assembling uncomfortable secrets along the way. Unfortunately, some of the tales included in The Life's first edition brought threats of lawsuits, forcing her to water down some of the more sordid details. He's also enthusiastic in describing The Life's legacy in the years after its publication, when the great Brontë myth was beginning to coalesce. Even though I've read other Brontë biographies and knew what was going to happen, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë made everything feel fresh again—and just a touch scandalous.

Which is exactly what I enjoy most in a literary biography.

[oldromantics]

A wonderfully-written gem of a book for the Brontë scholar/devoted fan, history buff, or anyone with even a passing interest in Brontë's books or the context in which they were written.

After reading this, I felt so much sorrow and sympathy for Charlotte who was so loving and unapologetically genuine, but was let down by: a) her absolutely bonkers father; b) her husband; c) people (read: men) who continually underestimated her "worth" because of her class and appearance. The shocking physical descriptions given by William Thackeray, for example, were so mean-spirited, unnecessary, and bitter, that he's been swiftly added to my "19th Century Writer Shit List" (which is currently populated by the odious likes of Charles Dickens and Percy Bysshe Shelley).

The book is very easy to follow, despite its vast cast of "characters", and provides some fab insight into how Elizabeth Gaskell set out to write an honest biography of her friend (CB) and the scandals that ensued along the way. Having visited Haworth and the Parsonage Museum, myself, the scene setting really took me back there and sets a poignant backdrop to a home filled to the rafters with grief and loneliness.

Highly, highly recommend!

[Desirae]

I have been obsessed with the Brontës for decades, and I have read enough biographies, letters, novels, recollections, and competing interpretations of this extraordinary family to think I have a fairly solid understanding of the Brontë mythology. And yet Graham Watson’s The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life managed to make me look at that mythology differently. What fascinated me most is that this is not simply another biography of Charlotte Brontë. It is, in many ways, a biography of the invention of Charlotte Brontë herself—the process by which a complicated woman, her complicated family, and their complicated history were transformed into the legendary Brontës we think we know today.

Watson begins in 1850, when Elizabeth Gaskell first meets Charlotte, still publicly known as Currer Bell. Charlotte had already become a literary sensation, but she remained intensely private and mysterious. She had also suffered the devastating loss of Branwell, Emily, and Anne in rapid succession, leaving her the surviving Brontë sibling and, increasingly, the keeper of the family story. Their meeting becomes the foundation of an intimate friendship that would ultimately produce Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë after Charlotte’s death in 1855.

I particularly loved this structure because Watson is not merely asking, “What happened to Charlotte Brontë?” He is asking, “How did Charlotte Brontë become the Charlotte Brontë?” Those are very different questions.

The first half of the book follows Charlotte’s final years: her growing literary fame, her relationships with Gaskell and other admirers, her grief over her siblings, and eventually her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte died in 1855, only months after her marriage and during a difficult pregnancy. But rather than treating these years as a melancholy epilogue to the more famous Brontë story, Watson makes them the beginning of the real subject: Charlotte as the surviving custodian of her family’s mythology.

And this is where the book becomes especially fascinating to me.

Charlotte was, in Watson’s telling, not simply the passive subject of the mythology that later grew around the Brontës. She was one of its earliest architects. She told stories about her childhood, her father, the deprivation she and her siblings endured, and the circumstances that shaped their writing. Watson suggests that these anecdotes had been refined over years into a narrative of suffering and emotional deprivation—a story that gave meaning to Charlotte’s own life and literary identity.

I found this particularly compelling when it came to Emily, Anne, and Branwell.

Charlotte’s eulogizing of Emily and Anne helped create the almost sacred image of the two extraordinary sisters we have inherited. Emily becomes the mysterious, elemental genius; Anne the quieter, morally serious sister; Charlotte the survivor who remains behind to tell their story. There is enormous love in Charlotte’s portrayals, but Watson makes us consider the possibility that love and mythmaking are not mutually exclusive. Charlotte was grieving, but she was also constructing a narrative.

Branwell is where that construction becomes considerably messier.

Charlotte’s descriptions of her brother shifted depending upon the story she was telling. His alcoholism, drug use, failures, and sexual indiscretions were part of the family reality, but Charlotte also supplied Gaskell with another, more romantic explanation for his collapse: the devastating affair with a married woman. Watson draws attention to these inconsistencies, and they become fascinating precisely because they expose Charlotte’s need to make Branwell’s destruction narratively meaningful.

Was Branwell simply a deeply troubled addict whose choices devastated himself and his family? Or was he, in Charlotte’s later telling, a tragic romantic figure destroyed by passion and rejection? The answer matters because it demonstrates how biography becomes storytelling. Charlotte could not change what happened to her brother, but she could influence what his life meant.

Then comes Elizabeth Gaskell.

Gaskell took Charlotte’s stories, her letters, her confidences, and the recollections of friends, servants, acquaintances, and former schoolmates and attempted to turn them into a definitive life. The resulting biography became enormously influential—but also extraordinarily controversial. People objected to their portrayals, Patrick Brontë was furious, and Gaskell was forced to revise the book twice within six months.

What Watson demonstrates so well is that the Brontë legend was not created by one person. It was collaborative, accidental, loving, self-protective, and sometimes self-serving. Charlotte shaped the stories. Gaskell interpreted them. Their readers transformed them into mythology.

That is what made The Invention of Charlotte Brontë such an irresistible read for me. After decades of loving the Brontës, I found myself fascinated by the uncomfortable space between truth and legend. Watson doesn't destroy the mythology so much as hold it up to the light and show us its seams.

And somehow, knowing that the Brontë story was constructed makes it feel even more compelling. These women were not simply characters trapped inside a tragic Victorian legend. They were writers—and writers understand better than anyone the power of controlling a story.

[Sarah Holz]

Not a bad book on Charlotte and the Brontës, but almost none of the information presented was not something I read elsewhere before, so I’m not entirely sold on its premise that it is revealing anything particularly new about the family.

[Brian Bess]

How a creative, melancholic writer became posthumously reinvented into a literary legend

[Lloyd Downey]

It's rather unusual for me to be reading a biography of a fiction writer and I can't really recall what prompted mw to buy it. Maybe it was a nostalgic recollection of the reading I did for the Honours exam in English when I was in my final year of high school. I found that I read rather too much of Jane Austen and certainly read Wuthering Heights multiple times. (Though Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte....Charlotte's younger sister. I WAS fascinated by this book (WH) and still remember the father arriving home and announcing that he has just walked 60 miles from Liverpool...and produced the child Heathcliff from under his cloak. The father here certainly fits the bill for Patrick, the Bronte girl's actual father.
This book is clearly a biography of Charlotte Bronte but it is also the story of how the main, original and "authentic" biography was produced by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte's friend. It's also the story of how the various myths and legends surrounding Charlotte came into being and were perhaps reinforced by Elizabeth's book.
Really, those girls (and their brother) seemed to have precious little contact with the world on which to base their writings......So no surprise that one can find reflections of most of the people they knew in the characters of the books. And pretty clear that Jane Eyre is very much an autobiographic account of Charlotte's life ...though embellished with her inner conversations and imagination. And Charlotte seems to make this very clear in her response to critics after the publication of "Villette". viz:
"With a frankness she would at one time have only spoken through her characters, Charlotte spelled it out: [to critical reviewers of her novel “Villette”]....Providence so regulated my destiny that I was born and have been reared in the seclusion of a country parsonage. I have never been rich enough to go out into the world as a participator in its gaieties,......the brief and rare glimpses I have had of the world do not incline me to think I should seek its circles with very keen zest–nor can I consider such a disinclination a just subject for reproach. This is the truth. The careless, rather than malevolent insinuations of reviewers have, it seems, widely spread another impression."
I enjoyed the book far more than I ever thought I would. And I'm left with profound respect for Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte...and some sadness and the rough deal they encountered from life. Clearly the males of the story are the villains in this biography. And maybe justly so...though I wonder what it was in society that brought this about.
I now recall what really turned me off Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters for the last 60 years....and it was the obsessions about marriage and the procession of curates who seemed to be one of the few marriageable options around for educated young ladies. Either a curate or a rake from the military or a bore from the Law. Though I guess, this was real life. Either you found someone who was a rough match or you lived as a spinster, caring for your aging parents. (Which looked like being Charlotte's fate). Though I was impressed with Mary, the friend of Charlotte from her first school ,who emigrated to NZ and seemed to make a new and different life for herself there.
I was going to give the book four stars but after writing this review, so far, I'm giving it five stars.
I've also included some extracts from the book (below) which appealed, or struck me in some way. (Mainly as an aide memoire for me but also to evoke the writing for me in the years to come).
Part One: Visiting (1850–1854)
Charlotte flinched at the spectacle of a governess surrounded by small children. For here was the woman she had once been, before she won the celebrity that now attracted the class of people who once employed her as an ignorable underling......A governess, without prospects or means, had to separate herself from her family and migrate into the friendless territory of live-in role between servants and masters, respected by neither.
He [Charlotte’s father] was frugal and stern, eating separately from his six motherless children and leaving them to be educated by the servants, destroying their colourful shoes and depriving them of meat to staunch vanity and indulgence. Charlotte and three of her sisters boarded at the charity school where the eldest, Maria and Elizabeth, contracted the tuberculosis that killed them six weeks apart aged 11 and 10 after they were brought home.
Harriet Martineau heard similar stories from Charlotte the night they met. To her, Charlotte was elemental, ‘full of life and power’, volunteering ‘her name and the history of her life’ in an intense two-hour dialogue.
After a lifetime of preparation, their literary careers were over after only three years, amounting to ignored poetry and three disdained novels. Branwell’s predicted glories never rose beyond a few published verses, leaving stacks of unpublished poems and stories.
From adolescence, Branwell cultivated the rakish air of an effortlessly talented Romantic poet: garrulous, supremely self-assured but personally reckless.
The pen names that protected them in life were obscuring them in death, hastening the tide that had swept away the rest of the family, pulling them further from her reach. She [Charlotte] compromised and decided their rehabilitation should start with what was already published. Copies of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were scarce after only two years, suggesting their publisher, T.C. Newby, had sold out without reprinting them......Equally unrepresentative for Charlotte, though inescapably impressive, was Emily’s Wuthering Heights. Its power, she told Williams: fills me with renewed admiration–but yet I am oppressed–the reader is scarcely ever permitted a taste of unalloyed pleasure–every beam of sunshine is poured down through black bars of threatening cloud–every page is surcharged with a sort of moral electricity;
In looking over my sister Anne’s papers I find mournful evidence that religious feeling had … subdued her mood and bearing to a perpetual pensiveness:
Charlotte wrote, ‘My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character.......Hers was a life of contemplative seclusion, deliberately cleared of complications.....An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world......Emily’s: disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion....Both were starved of support and encouragement.......Writing candidly in a way their reticence once prohibited, this was not only Charlotte’s love letter to the past but her plea for it to end.
At the start of October, Charlotte received a letter from her school friend Mary Taylor, posted from New Zealand the previous April.......Her advice could not have been better timed. It urged Charlotte to fight for professional success. ‘You ought to care as much for that as you do about going to Heaven,’ she told her sharply......Your books will sell and you will acquire influence and power.
After tea, they were left alone to talk. Harriet remembered there was something: inexpressibly affecting in the aspect of the frail little creature who had done such wonderful things, and who was able to bear up, with so bright an eye and so composed a countenance......When Harriet assured her Jane Eyre was among the best novels of their time, Charlotte glowed with pleasure and relief.
Charlotte Brontë was never free … from the gnawing sensation or consequent feebleness of downright hunger; and she never grew an inch from that time. She was the smallest of women and it was that school which stunted her growth.
Harriet wrote the day before Charlotte arrived, ‘and the most splendid skies at night. My starlight walks before my early breakfast are delicious....The rushing River Rotha seems to carry down gushes of stars to the lake.’....Harriet rose early for an ice-cold bath then a walk in the dawn before she started writing at seven.....At the weekend, Harriet took Charlotte to dinner at the home of Edward Quillinan, an elderly minor poet and widower of Wordsworth’s daughter Dora.......Quillinan acquiesced.[to conditions, because of Charlotte’s shyness] and told her he would only include one neighbour, Matthew Arnold....The underwhelming feeling was mutual. Charlotte thought him superficial but was told he would improve on acquaintance,
He was considering what Charlotte told him that evening. Her education in Brussels was one of the turning points in her life, initiating deeply conflicting private emotions and an unrequited love that took her years to recover from, its influence bleeding into all her books.
Yet here with two strangers, she talked about it all.
As the new editions of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were picked up, the press presented Charlotte’s prefaces as an exposé: ‘The unknown authors! The Bells! At length, the veil has been drawn aside that shrouded the mystery of the relationship of Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell. They were three sisters.
Charlotte’s life as an anonymous woman ended with the year 1850, which began with her neighbours’ whispers, and ended with her name in the press. Currer Bell, birthed for print, was effectively killed by it. Unmasked, Charlotte stepped into 1851 a public figure and a celebrity, known to all by her own name–and for her own talents.
Elizabeth lived two miles south-east of Manchester’s heavily industrialised centre in a large house she had taken a few months before she met Charlotte in Windermere...Here Elizabeth could introduce Charlotte to her family for the first time: her cleric husband of eighteen years....All the girls were inheritors of their mother’s intelligence and charm....Charlotte was enchanted by their exuberance and unselfconscious affection.....This, Charlotte knew, was how a home should feel, with a partner and children and friends orbiting ‘a woman whose conversation and company I should not soon tire.
Elizabeth was surprised when she added, ‘If I had to earn my living, I would go out as a governess again, much as I dislike the life. But I think one should only write out of the fullness of one’s heart, spontaneously.’
From the moment he brought Thackeray and Charlotte together, she was star-struck.
Thackeray recalled ‘the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterise the woman.’ Once mocked or taken for granted, Charlotte turned her devotion into laser-like scrutiny, making others more uncomfortable than they felt free to make her......‘I was moved to speak to him of some of his shortcomings,’ she coolly reported to Ellen,
The first few rows, Charlotte told Ellen, were completely filled by the elderly duchesses and countesses who won the best of Thackeray’s attention. She locked eyes with him as soon as she arrived. He came down from the platform and took her to his mother, announcing for half the audience to hear, in jest but with a barb, ‘Mother, you must allow me to introduce you to Jane Eyre!’.......In a hall bustling with aristocrats, he was calling her out as the most famously uncouth domestic servant in England. If he needed an opportunity to remind her of her position as a lower-class subject, without defence against the scrutiny of social superiors, and to restate his own as the effortless commander of patronage, here it was.
But in private, after displays of courtesy, Carlisle and Monckton Milnes were derisory: ‘Her person was insignificant, her dress somewhat rustic, her language quaintly precise and formal, her manner odd and constrained. Altogether this was a woman whom even London could not lionise; somebody outwardly altogether too plain, simple, unpretending.’
Charlotte wrote to her father and Ellen that she enjoyed the lecture but did not mention she was smouldering with rage.
Elizabeth’s daughters remembered how passionately she spoke about seeing Rachel Felix a few weeks before. Interviewed in the twentieth century, they recalled how, ‘Her eyes fairly blazed, and she clenched her fists as she tried to give them her impressions of the great French actress.’......There, on stage, was an expression of her own buried fire, her resilience continually tested by tragedy, and there–magnificent and insubordinate–was the woman as artist.
She was seen by a doctor at the end of December who confirmed her lungs were clear but, suspecting she had an inflamed liver, prescribed mercury pills to be taken at night, followed in the morning by drinking a black purgative of Epsom salts, liquorice, cardamom, ammonia and senna. She had symptoms of poisoning within twenty-four hours. [No wonder...taking mercury].
At last, Harriet made the connection between her critique and Charlotte’s withdrawal and confronted her directly to ask why her letters had stopped. Charlotte confided to Ellen:
Miss Martineau wrote to ask why she did not hear from me....I have declined being her visitor–and bid her good-bye......The gulf was not bridged and they never spoke again.
She said Arthur [The curate who had confessed his love to Charlotte but had been rejected by her] and Patrick [her father , the Vicar] were still not speaking despite still working together. ‘Papa has a perfect antipathy to him–and he, I fear, to papa. Martha hates him.
Charlotte heard that when other vicars visited Arthur he was so withdrawn and silent they never returned:
Having for most of her life been the one who loved others without being loved in return and with a new novel whose principal theme was unrequited love, Charlotte unexpectedly found herself on the other side of that dynamic, as the rejector rather than the rejected,
She decided to leave it with God and turned to prayer in her quandary. She could either permanently reject someone she did not love and risk losing her last chance at marriage or accept him and whatever life that would bring, one where she might receive love but never feel it for a man who was either sincere or not.
The parsonage consensus was that Arthur was an impoverished opportunist. Fifty-five years on, Julia would remember Charlotte Brontë affectionately in an interview where she described another example of her morbid shyness when a visitor dropped by:....Louisa Potter published nostalgic sketches in the Manchester Guardian about life at the start of the century. Two generations later in the 1890s, she reflected on how bewildering it was to lose her rural landscape twice, when country settlements were subsumed into industrial villages that in turn were swept off by larger factories, more tenements......
Elizabeth understood part of Charlotte’s reticence stemmed from her feeling of physical ugliness. She had always felt this, Charlotte told her, it having ‘been strongly impressed upon her imagination early in life’. As an adult, as one relationship after another fell into estrangement, Charlotte exaggerated this sense of disadvantage, imagining her appearance rather than her unsociability put off strangers. She told Elizabeth, ‘I notice that after a stranger has once looked at my face, he is careful not to let his eyes wander to that part of the room again!’
Elizabeth explained: The difference between Miss Brontë and me is that she puts all her naughtiness into her books, and I put all my goodness. I am sure she works off a great deal that is morbid into her writing and out of her life; and my books are so far better than I am, but I often feel ashamed of having written them, as if I were a hypocrite.....And yet, Elizabeth knew, despite Charlotte’s instinct to light her way ahead by burning bridges, ‘she is thoroughly good; only made bitter by some deep mortifications and feeling her plainness as “something almost repulsive”.’......By her own account, Charlotte was a drudge to duty–‘duty to her father, to the poor around her, to the old servants.
This puzzled and concerned Ellen. Led by Charlotte’s own ambivalence about Arthur, she feared she was starting to cave under the strain of her own loneliness, reducing her to such desperation she was now considering marrying anyone in a last attempt to avoid the spinsterhood Ellen felt was Charlotte’s inescapable destiny. To Charlotte’s astonishment, Ellen appears to have tried to explain this to her. Instead of drawing friendly sympathy, her admission of vulnerability about Arthur had only drawn castigation. The women argued and Ellen left.
As illness in Haworth parsonage made alternate invalids of Charlotte and her father.....He seemed to have lost his sight. ‘He was in total darkness. Medical aid was immediately summoned but nothing could be done. It was feared a slight stroke of paralysis had occurred.’ While his speech and movements were not affected Charlotte naturally feared those would come next, to leave him paralysed by the next day. By morning, he was gradually able to distinguish daylight and his sight slowly restored imperfectly over the next few hours, as though a curtain was rising.
‘Without feelings of humble reverence for men, female characters such as Lucy Snowe, and by implication Charlotte Brontë, cannot deserve the respect of a man,’ the reviewer concluded firmly.
Her account of how Emily and Anne perished from hardship and ill health before their time seems not to have moved the critics at The Christian Remembrancer. Far from being sympathetic, they felt it was unwarranted exceptionalism that did not excuse the moral degradation of their novels.
After what must have felt like the irreparable conclusion of her twenty-two-year friendship with Ellen, Charlotte was at a loss. According to Elizabeth: No one comes to the house; nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen.
They walked down to the house for tea, to be told that Patrick would join them for once, ‘an honour to me I believe,’ Elizabeth commented. She found the 76-year-old vicar ‘a tall fine looking old man, with silver bristles all over his head; nearly blind’ who spoke with a strong Northern Irish accent. He had ‘a sort of grand and stately way of describing past times, which tallied well with his striking appearance,’ but she noticed how his gentility gave way to acerbity when it came to the personal, and how inflexibly he exerted his authority over Charlotte, making her acquiesce in a way Elizabeth had never seen before:
Elizabeth described how when Charlotte left the room: then all his pride in her genius and fame came out. He eagerly listened to everything I could tell him of the high admiration I
had at any time heard expressed for her works. He would ask for certain speeches over and over again, as if he desired to impress them on his memory.

[Liam Guilar]

This book tells the stories of Charlotte Bronte’s last years and the writing of Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography. Unusually, Watson takes the command ‘show don’t tell’ and applies it to the writing of a biography, narrating events, but leaving his readers to draw their own conclusions. The style, with its obsession with the weather, hard journeys, long descriptions of the interior of houses, lingering descriptions of death bed details, and the portrayal of his characters as martyrs, echoes the novels of his protagonists.


'Perhaps after all, the truth about Charlotte Bronte was just as Elizabeth expected from the moment she had met her seven years earlier: that after a life time of emotional starvation and grief, one of the most talented women of her generation was harried and manipulated by the men around her into their serf, that her wish for concord, balance and stability had been exploited into defeated compromise by all those who needed none and, broken in spirit, she crawled, she knelt, then she tremulously stood until the hammer blows of tragedy rained upon her again (p. 231)'.

It's a fine paragraph. It epitomises a version of Charlotte’s life. It also reveals what’s wrong with this book. Charlotte is often, as here, presented as a victim. But her life is not all that different to thousands of women of her class, in her position. They served as governesses, and many hated it. They worked as teachers when they didn’t want to in a system that ground down teachers and pupils. They looked after widowed fathers or unmarried brothers because their society had no other outlet for them. And compared to millions living in the new urban slums, her life was one of genteel ease. Howarth parsonage was not an isolated place on the moors. There were people in the village. If the Brontes didn’t want to socialise with people they thought of as inferior that was their choice.

“One of the Most talented women of her generation”. One of the most talented writers perhaps, but Charlotte and her sisters were lucky to be talented in a way their culture found acceptable for women. Women who might have been talented in other ways had no chance. There were no doctors, or lawyers. Universities were barred to them, the visual arts and music were difficult to access. ‘Harried and manipulated’ are value judgements this book doesn’t investigate. After the publication of Jane Eyre doors opened in the literary world she and her sisters had dreamt about. That she couldn’t walk through doesn’t mean they weren’t open.

Specific to this book is that ‘perhaps’ which begins the sentence.

In a book about ‘The invention of Charlotte Bronte’ you might expect some analysis of this ‘truth’, or some attempt to see how such a story came to dominate alternative ones. Watson offers no such analysis.

If you’re looking for some new information or insight into Charlotte’s life, or Gaskell’s biography, there isn’t any. The perspective provided by over a century of fossicking in the small details of Charlotte’s life is missing. The material has been picked over since Charlotte’s death. The essential debates: was Cowan bridge school a nightmare; was Charlotte’s childhood as grim as she presented it, what exactly was her relationship with three men: her father, her husband, and her Belgian Professor? If you’re waiting for a verdict, a weighing of the evidence, or even a statement of the current consensus, you will be disappointed. The book is happy to narrate.

The subtitle of the book points to its structural flaw. It has two halves, and they don’t seem to have been introduced to each other. Logically, Charlotte’s relationship with her future biographer could be the subject of the first half, but Gaskell fades in and out and it’s padded with familiar stories from her last few years. The only coherence is chronological. The second part details the writing of Gaskell’s biography and its immediate reception. Presumably this is the ‘scandal that made her’ though it could be argued Jane Eyre deserves that title. The jacket blurb hints at ‘Illicit love’.

The title suggests the ‘real Charlotte’ has gone missing, has been recreated out of the facts as a figure that that isn’t ‘factual’, but there’s no analysis to distinguish between ‘truth’ and ‘invention’.

[Socraticgadfly]

Gack! Seemed promising, fell off in the second half and fell to pieces with post-reading research, which led to a serious rhetorical question with a snarky angle at the end.

What? Snark about Charlotte Brontë let alone the sisters? Yes, a bit.

What I thought might be 4 stars 1/3 through, then realized would be 3.5 rounded down 3/4 through, is 2.5 rounded down. Let's dig in.

Follow the title, not the subtitle. This is very much more about the "invention" of Charlotte Brontë, above all by Elizabeth Gaskill, but to some degree others, than it is a new biography.

In other words, Watson deconstructs the biography penned by Gaskill, but does little on the side of reconstruction. This includes not making judgment calls when a reconstruction would require them, with one partial exception.

And, doing further research on that? Instead of 3.5 stars, rated down? It’s 2.5, rated down, per the last few paragraphs.

He does indicate CB lied when she tells someone, about a scene with Lucy Snowe in Villette with her taking opium, that it came from her general knowledge of society. Rather, it came from her knowledge of Branwell's addiction, or possibly her trying it herself once. Watson plumps for the latter, while at the same time, the word "opium" isn't in the index.

However, this is arguably a point where he (and other commenters on this scene) fall short. Was laudanum, the opium tinctured alcohol, readily used in Victorian Britain? Sure — by men. Sure, in fiction, including Becky Sharp in Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” Sure, by working mothers on their kids. But, for an unmarried childless adult woman? Especially for “recreational” use? No, not by women, except prostitutes, I expect, unlike brother Branwell.
But, if Brontë was confabulating elsewhere, whether to Ellen Nussery, George Smith, Harriett Martineau (and general London society) or not, he won't make those calls, not even speculative ones. And

He won't venture anything about why Charlotte repressed a reprint of Anne's “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” and thus damaged her authorial reputation. Was it fear of her own being besmirched? Was it a bit of jealousy, thinking this better than anything Charlotte wrote? A bit of both? A bit of both and other things? Watson doesn't make the call.
A bowdlerized version came out eventually in 1854; no indication that Charlotte had a reaction. Weirdly, that continued to be pushed as the “original” until Oxford brought out a properly edited version of the first edition, with Charlotte’s intro, in 1992.

On Charlotte's pregnancy that killed her, if the doctors attending her knew the same "pessary" to induce labor that Gaskell knew, and said she would have brought with her, coming earlier if she knew the situation was that bad, why DIDN'T the doctors induce? Did they leave any records? Did Arthur or Patrick talk about this? Watson offers not even speculation. Maybe they thought this was an abortifactant.

On Gaskell’s biography, we’re lucky that she knew nothing of either libel law nor inheritance law. She comes as almost as conniving as Harriet Martineau. Harriet Martineau? Didn’t know that Charlotte had met her. Kind of an ass. Her nephew, Matthew Arnold, yes, that one, also an ass.

Ellen Nussey may not have been that much less conniving.

What follows is a mix of further critique of the book, mixed with my thoughts on Charlotte's life. I've read both "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights," though no other work by Charlotte or Emily, and nothing by Anne.

My god, I didn’t know that Charlotte Brontë’s life was THIS tragic, this suffocated by her father, and this principled. Watson does a decent job of working with Elizabeth Gaskell’s original, through the eventual punch-pulling of hers and more. Example of Watson’s updating: Father Patrick was apparently not a violence-prone volcano, unlike Gaskell’s bio’s claims. He was still far from a benign influence on Charlotte after the deaths of Emily, Anne and Branwell. But, it's no more than decent, and again, the book doesn't go beyond trying to halfway overhaul Gaskell.

Question: WHY did she cut off contact with publisher George Smith when she heard word of his nuptials? Had she actually been hoping something? It seems like her own engagement a few months later had her self-shutting many doors and raising walls higher.

Why DID she eventually accept Arthur? His stubbornness? The one avenue of escape not from spinsterhood per se but her father’s suffocation? And, if a suggestion from Wikipedia is right that she died from pregnancy complications and not tuberculosis, she was unknowingly signing her own death warrant. (Watson has the same diagnosis. It’s not the “romance” of the last of the Brontes also dying from consumption, to use the old word, but it is what it is.) Interestingly, at times, Arthur sounds like Patrick.

Why did she accept him after turning down Henry Nussey 15 years earlier, supposedly in part because he was a clergyman?

Why does Wikipedia not mention the proposal a year later from David Pryce, also clergy as a vicar? Even more, why does Watson not mention him? Or, with both, James Taylor, from her publisher's company? And, did Thomas Brontë Branwell, her cousin, drop a proposal? Also not mentioned by name, let alone a possible proposal in his Haworth visit either by Watson or by Wikipedia's article. See an Anne Brontë fan site for more.

Patrick refused to give her away? Ye gads.

On honeymoon, already, Watson notes she loses her shyness around strangers and it never returns, presumably with Arthur as protector.

But, did Arthur kneecap her as litterateur, with comment that he married Charlotte Brontë, clergyman’s daughter not Cutter Bell, novelist?

Per my link above, is there a cult of the Brontë sisters almost as great as that of the OTMA sisters, the grand duchess daughters of Nicholas II? I actually entered that query into a web search and hit this site.

And, its criticism, including of Charlotte toward her sisters, in this case, if she destroyed a second novel of Emily’s, is withering:

Would Charlotte Brontë actually have committed such a crime against literature? All the evidence suggests it. Charlotte's attitude toward her sisters' literary efforts was both cautious and patronizing. She took the surprising liberty of "improving" Emily's poetry when she published a posthumous edition of it, altering word choices and even adding or removing entire stanzas.

See above!

But the author finishes:

It would be deeply unfair, however, for us to think badly of Charlotte Brontë. However much we may regret what we perceive as meddling, we should never forget that Charlotte stood within the circle of that deeply private and close-knit family, while we ourselves stand on the outside. Charlotte was not a scholar, but a devoted sister—the oldest sister to her siblings for almost as long as any of them could remember. If she sought to shield her younger sisters from a harsh and misunderstanding public, we may doubt her prudence but never her love.

Agreed.

Charlotte was the tragic last heir of a family literary legacy with no place to turn. Her decisions weren't easy — even if they were done in part to protect her image as much or more than either sister's, or the family's as a whole, and even if part of the difficulty in making them was self-inflicted.

Bethink her tragic indeed, but put it in a humanized context.

Unlike Soy Boy the History Nerd, with a 5-star review at least as uncritical as most of his on history and military history.

[Susan]

This is a fascinating account of the last years of Charlotte Brontë's life and of how those around her attempted to control the narrative of her life after her death. It begins with Charlotte, the last surviving sibling, bereft and lonely. As her identity as the author of 'Jane Eyre' is gradually made more public, she is invited to meet the great and the famous, including William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. Unsure of herself, shy and isolated, it is apparent that Charlotte had a tendency to overshare. She began to tell people about her life, the deaths of Emily, Anne and Branwell, of her elder sisters, of her experiences at school and her difficult life at Haworth. Her father, Patrick, was unwilling for her to marry Arthur Nicholls and later, there are disquieting accounts from her old friend, Ellen Nussey, about how Arthur tried to edit their letters to each other and was not keen on her writing.

After Charlotte's death, Elizabeth Gaskell became involved in writing her biography. This happily coincided with the wish and encouragement of Ellen Nussey for things in the press to be addressed. Charlotte's father and widower are less keen and highly private, but Gaskell begins to throw herself into the challenge. The later part of this book becomes the story of how Elizabeth began to uncover what she felt was the truth about Charlotte's life and to write what became The Life of Charlotte Brontë. The biography affected the reputation of those involved with Charlotte Bronte and was highly opinionated, relying on correspondence and leading to accusations of slander and leading to revisions to avoid lawsuits. It really is a must-read for fans of the Brontes and helps the reader to understand the difficulties that Charlotte faced. When alone and unprepared, she found herself lonely and without the confidences of her sisters, she was judged and often naive in her confidences. Elizabeth Gaskell's biography has not been out of print, since published, but also caused its author a great deal of worry and annoyance, leading her to label it an 'unhappy book.' However, the story of how it came to be is a very interesting one indeed and highly recommended.