'I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading Villette ... There is something preternatural about its power' George Eliot
Charlotte Bronte was born on 21 April 1816. Her father was curate of Haworth, Yorkshire and her mother died when she was five years old, leaving five daughters and one son. In 1824 Charlotte, Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily were sent to Cowan Bridge, a school for clergymen's daughters, where Maria and Elizabeth both caught tuberculosis and died. The children were taught at home from this point on and together they created vivid fantasy worlds which they explored in their writing. Charlotte worked as a teacher from 1835 to 1838 and then as a governess. In 1846, along with Emily and Anne, Charlotte published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. After this Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, Anne wrote Agnes Grey and Charlotte wrote The Professor. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were both published but Charlotte's novel was initially rejected. In 1847 Jane Eyre became her first published novel and met with immediate success. Between 1848 and 1849 Charlotte lost her remaining siblings- Emily, Branwell and Anne. She published Shirley in 1849, Villette in 1853 and in 1854 she married the Revd. Arthur Bell Nicholls. She died the next year, on 31 March 1855.
Weird and wonderful
*Guardian*
So original, so transgressive in its content and so startlingly
unorthodox in its form, that its 19th-century readers were
dumbfounded by it...a visionary description of psychic life ...a
subtle and dazzlingly inventive exploration of areas of
consciousness never mapped in fiction before, and seldom since
*Sunday Times*
Villette has always been the most heart-squeezing of the Bronte
novels...a perfect study of quiet desperation...a rich novel
*Sunday Express*
A novel with an unconscious mind. The deeper you dig, the more
disturbing it becomes
*Independent*
Charlotte Bronte's most profound achievement
*Independent*
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