Beth’s Reviews > The Life of Charlotte Brontë > Status Update

I hadn't realized how quickly Charlotte's remaining siblings fell. Three within nine months.

It's funny that "write what you know," or its equivalent, was being bandied about even 150-plus years ago. Charlotte, in her guise of "Currer Bell," makes a good counterargument against that thinking around here.

The changes to v. 1, ch. XIII are slightly more substantial than v. 1, ch. IV's, but not enough to justify a full reread. The changes amount to pivoting the cause of Branwell's dissipation and decline to unspecified failings in character or mental health, rather than the aftereffects of an unsuccessful love affair. Less dramatic, somewhat less interesting.

Gaskell is doing well showing the reader that within the outwardly quiet life, was a vivid inner life. The outer life is starting to feel rather stifling, I have to admit.

Charlotte has a pen pal or two from the boarding school she went to, and is still fangirling on Lord Wellington, though I have the impression she also has other things to think about.

Adolescent Charlotte was a Lord Wellington fangirl??

The 3rd edition versions of V. I, Chapters IV and XIII were included as an appendix in my paperback. (The main text is the 1st edition.) Ch. IV has the same gist in its 1st and 3rd edition versions, by my reckoning, and I didn't perceive more than one or two minor differences between them. I suspect that there will be more noticeable and substantial differences between the two versions of Ch. XIII.

Surprised myself reading 60 pages of this in one day, when I've been struggling with sitting through 20 pages of fiction, even in audio form.

I have two Penguin editions of this book, edited by two different people: one from 1975, the other from 1997; one in paper, one in ebook. I've read the introductory material from one, and have started on the other's.

I'll likely read the main body in ebook, because the paperback is in rough shape and somewhat musty (though I've had worse).

I'm in butterfly mode and this is a change of pace from fiction. Elisabeth Jay's introduction makes the reader aware of Brontë's letters that Gaskell had available to her, and Gaskell's biases that came out in her depiction of her friend's life. (all writing of any worth has a bias, and it's good to know what that will amount to, going in to this one.)