Charlotte Brontë
1816–55

Charlotte Brontë, one of the most gifted English novelists, was born at Thornton, Yorkshire, on 21 April 1816. Her father, originally Patrick Prunty (1777-1861), who was a clergyman, came from Ireland; her mother was a native of Cornwall. Her life almost to its close was one of sorrow and struggle. In 1821 the family removed to Haworth, a village situated amid the Yorkshire Moors, and in 1822 her mother died. In her eighth year Charlotte was sent to Cowan’s Bridge School, the Lowood of which she has given so dark a picture in Jane Eyre. Two of her sisters took fever there and died. Charlotte, whose own health had broken down, was taken back to Haworth, and remained there until 1831, when she was sent to school at Roehead kept by Miss Wooler, with whom she formed a life-long friendship. Mr Bronte’s austere and gloomy nature cast a shadow over his children’s lives. His means were narrow, and his daughters, Charlotte, Emily (born 20 August 1818), and Anne (born 25 March 1820), were forced to seek a livelihood as governesses. To fit themselves for higher education work, Charlotte and Emily studied at Brussels from 1842 to 1844. In 1846 the three sisters published a volume of poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – Currer Bell being the pseudonym of Charlotte. The book attracted little notice. Its authors then turned to prose fiction; Charlotte writing The Professor; Anne, Agnes Grey; and Emily (‘Ellis Bell’) the strange moving romance of Wuthering Heights. The Professor having been rejected on the score of deficiency in plot-interest, Charlotte set to work on Jane Eyre (1847), which gained a great but not uncontested success. Her brother Branwell died in September 1848, her sister Emily on 19th December and after the death of Anne (28th May 1849), Charlotte was left alone with her father in the gloomy Haworth parsonage. A third novel, Shirley, appeared in 1849, and in 1852 Villette, which was her own favourite. She married, in 1854, Mr Nicholls, who had been her father’s curate at Haworth. Her brief married life was a happy one, though her husband would have wished her to abandon her literary work. A new story, Emma had been begun, however, before her death, which occurred at Haworth on 31 March 1855.