Introduction

From the 1890s onwards the Brontë family has attracted copious biographical interest, and with reason. They have no precise parallel in the literary world. In the middle of the nineteenth century we have the writing and publication of novels and poetry by three sisters whose work shares a family resemblance, but in which each sees the world differently. The content of this work is in places startling and its impact elemental. Two of the novels at least have become the subject of tremendous popular affection and thorough scholarly comment alike. The initial literary interest speedily turned to a biographical one after the publication in 1857 of Mrs Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë, whose gift was to paint in graphic terms the tragic isolation of this unconventional provincial family; the public soon learned of early disease and death, social exclusion, mystic attachment to nature, an allegedly tyrannous father (the tyranny much exaggerated), a drunken brother, childhood genius and adult poverty. How could the ‘Brontë myth’ fail to move the Victorian public?