Charlotte Brontë

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Standard Name: Brontë, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Brontë
Married Name: Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls
Pseudonym: Currer Bell
Used Form: Charlotte Bronte
CB 's five novels, with their passionate explorations of the dilemmas facing nineteenth-century middle-class English women, have made her perhaps the most loved, imitated, resisted, and hotly debated novelist of the Victorian period.
Etching of Charlotte Brontë after a portrait by George Richmond, 1850. She is seen from the waist up, seated, with one elbow resting on a table, that hand holding a small book and the other on her lap, holding a handkerchief. She wears a flat ribbon round her neck, and a dark dress, buttoned in front, with lace trim on the sleeves and bodice. Her dark, smooth hair is pulled back and tied with a dark ribbon.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Jane Welsh Carlyle
JWC attended a party given by Thackeray for Charlotte Brontë .
Surtees, Virginia. Jane Welsh Carlyle. Michael Russell, 1986.
211
Friends, Associates Julia Kavanagh
JK (by this time herself a published author) wrote a letter to Charlotte Brontë in praise of Jane Eyre.
Wise, Thomas J., editor. The Brontës. Porcupine Press, 1980, 4 vols.
II: 173
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Friends, Associates Mary Taylor
MT met Charlotte Brontë and Ellen Nussey at Miss Wooler's school; they became lifelong friends.
Taylor, Mary. Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere. Editor Stevens, Joan, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press, 1972.
1, 9, 13
Friends, Associates Julia Kavanagh
Charlotte Brontë called on JK at her home in London.
Wise, Thomas J., editor. The Brontës. Porcupine Press, 1980, 4 vols.
III: 118
Friends, Associates Julia Kavanagh
Charlotte Brontë noted that while JK admired the work, she considered the Maniac Mrs Rochester to be shocking.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Wise, Thomas J., editor. The Brontës. Porcupine Press, 1980, 4 vols.
II: 173
The two women shared a mutual acquaintance in William Smith Williams , a reader...
Friends, Associates Matthew Arnold
MA was acquainted with Charlotte Brontë and wrote a poem dedicated to her following her death. He also knew Rhoda Broughton , Emily Davies , and Harriet Martineau .
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
HM was visited by Charlotte Brontë at her home in Ambleside.
Martineau, Harriet. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Selected Letters, edited by Valerie Sanders, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. vii - xxxiii, 235.
xxii
Friends, Associates Mary Taylor
Mary's descriptions of life abroad provided Charlotte Brontë with what she described as a wish for wings,
qtd. in
Taylor, Mary. Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere. Editor Stevens, Joan, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press, 1972.
22
and MT successfully urged her and her sister Emily to pursue their studies in Brussels; they...
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
Charlotte Brontë first met HM in person in December 1849, after pseudonymously contacting her by letter the month before. The ensuing friendship was marked by admiration and sympathy on both sides.
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago, 1983, 2 vols.
2: 323-8
Friends, Associates Sarah Stickney Ellis
Among her few writing friends were Mary Howitt and her relations by marriage Mary and Anna Sewell . She greatly admired without personally knowing Elizabeth Fry , and felt a personal connection to Charlotte Brontë
Friends, Associates William Makepeace Thackeray
WMT was close to both of his surviving daughters, and was particularly proud when Anne 's first publication, the article Little Scholars, which appeared anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine. He was a sociable...
Friends, Associates Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ 's later social circle included many writers: Sydney, Lady Morgan , who became a close friend and for whom GJ acted as amanuensis; author Lady Llanover ; author and publisher Douglas Jerrold ; and...
Health Emily Brontë
EB apparently had a very independent character. In a famous incident related to Elizabeth Gaskell by Charlotte , Emily tried to help a possibly rabid dog, only to have it bite her. She immediately went...
Health Dora Carrington
Carrington attempted to give herself a miscarriage by riding a horse violently, and when this did not work she became depressed to a nearly suicidal degree.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Carrington: A Life of Dora Carrington, 1893-1932. John Murray, 1989.
271-2
She had mused to Gerald Brenan in 1920...
Health Emily Brontë
In a letter to her publisher, Charlotte Brontë reported with concern that her sister Emily was too ill to write: she had a cough and fever.
Brontë, Charlotte. The Letters of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Smith, Margaret, 1931 -, Clarendon Press, 2000, 3 vols.
2: 138

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