"I don’t tend to read biographies, but once I began Harman’s take on the extraordinary life of Charlotte Bronte (which is also, necessarily, a portrait of the secluded, intimate, and shockingly creative Bronte family) I couldn’t put it down. In episodes that often read more like a novel, Harman unfolds the letters, juvenalia, and sketches of Charlotte Bronte, weaving them together to give us a nuanced portrait of both duty and passion, restraint and restlessness, 'Currer' and Charlotte."
Publisher Vintage
Publication Date 2017-02-07
Section Literary Crit & Biography / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions / Jillian K.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780345803412
Charlotte Brontë famously lived her entire life in an isolated parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and with siblings whose astonishing creativity was a closely held secret. The genius of Claire Harman’s biography is that it transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to quiet rebellion and fierce ambition. Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte’s inner life with absorbing intensity. Brontë’s blazingly intelligent female characters brimming with hidden passions transformed English literature, even as a heartrending series of personal losses followed the author’s literary success. Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time.
