The Life of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

I ordered this book after reading Jane Eyre because I wanted to so know more about the author and her inspirations. Mrs. Gaskell was one of Charlotte's best friends and upon her death at the age of 38, her father asked Gaskell to write the biography, for reasons more than anything to quell all the rumors surrounding her writings.

After reading this, if you don't get up and do what you are made to do, there's something wrong! This lady's life was full of strife, illness, and constant suffering. However, she wrote anyway and her masterpiece, Jane Eyre, is considered one of the top 100 best books ever written (all done during one of the bleakest moments of her life). Were she to know that, I am sure she would rather do without the acclamation or have anyone know that it was her book. When she wrote Jane Eyre, her brother was deteriorating rapidly and actually died afterwards; her father was going blind, and her two remaining sisters, Emily and Anne, were not in the best of health nor was she. Emily died shortly after her brother, then Anne followed. In nine months time, Charlotte lost 3 of her family members! Plus, during the writing of Jane Eyre, her first book, The Professor, was making the rounds of all the publishing houses in England, being rejected by each one. And, to top that off, they all lived with their father in a parish in the middle of a cemetery! Talk about dreary! Gaskell also blames where the Brontes lived for their deaths - they were drinking the water around a cemetery and back then folks, there were no such things as cement vaults! Whatever disease or ailment from which the person died leaked from the grave, into the dirt, and thus, into the water supply. Wow.

It's VERY difficult to write a review of a biography - it is my opinion that you have to be interested in the subject matter to give it a thoughtful review. I cried through this thing - it just strikes you straight to the heart of the author. But it also awakens you to her immense amount of genius, something to which Gaskell constantly refers. I think that after reading this that it would be VERY difficult to write a screenplay for one of Charlotte's books if you DIDN'T read this book! To capture her feelings, her ideas, even when she lived would be impossible to do justice unless you have this book to help to get inside the meanings of her works. Gaskell does a wonderful job in the beginning of the book in describing the area in which the Brontes lived. Once your read that, you'll understand how all these ladies, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, obtained the inspiration for their stories. Gaskell gracefully paints an allegory of Charlotte's book, Shirley, to the paintings of Rembrandt. Enough said.

Also, you'll cry your eyes out at the end of this book too - this lady's life reached so many people when she was alive as well as afterwards.

This is a fascinating read - but read Jane Eyre first. You'll see where Rochester gets his character, as for Shirley too (its main character is patterned after her recently deceased sister, Emily), if you get that book to read as well. SPOILER ALERT: Guess what? That part in Jane Eyre when she hears Rochester calling her across England? That REALLY happened to Miss Bronte! (And yes, I cried again when I read that!) When I was reading that part in Jane Eyre, I knew instantly that she had to have experienced something like that simply from the way she described it. Amazing how God allows some of the neatest things to happen and then it touches the lives of millions of people for 164 years! Goosebump moment there! Great, great book, highly, highly, highly recommend!

One would do well to read Elizabeth Gaskell's novels as they are so well written. She wrote one biogrphy and that was of her friend Charlotte Bronte after Charlotte's death. Gaskell had been asked to write this biography by Charlotte's father and husband. Gaskell's biography is both excellent and informative in detail - and I might add, inspiring reading. I was introduced to Elizabeth Gaskell books after seeing the movie North and South. That movie gave me interest to read the novel. One is pleasantly surprised to read references to her charactars belief in God ...such expressed belief that had been ommitted in the movie. Yet it is such religious belief that gives her charactars richness of substance and depth - and it is belief in God that reafirmed Charlotte Bronte's determination to adhere to duty and to be sustained in all the sorrows that she endured. I realy do not have the withall to express my deep pleasure and satisfaction while reading books by Gaskell and those of C. Bronte, except to say that the vivid portrayals depicted in such books makes one wish to meet and know personaly these two outstanding writers of the Victorian age. And as I have written, her biography of her freind C. Bronte inspires one to carefully peruse and return often to this biography - The Life of Charlotte Bronte.