The Life of Charlotte Bronte

Resumen del libro

'I am sure the more fully she - Charlotte Brontë - the friend, the daughter, the sister, the wife, is known - the more highly she will be appreciated.' Mrs Gaskell was quite clear about her priorities when she began to set down the facts of a 'wild, sad life and the beautiful character that grew out of it'. The result was one of the greatest of all English biographies. The book itself was not to be without its stormy passage: Mrs Gaskell, as well she knew, ran up against Victorian shibboleths of propriety and sexual prudery. However, not even the amendments and cuts she was obliged to make in the second and third editions could destroy its overall unity or her psychologically convincing vision of the suffering, emotionally starved and tortured Charlotte Brontë whose life and pitiful death still grips and appalls us. The present text follows the controversial first edition throughout, while all the variations which appeared in the third edition have been recorded in notes and appendices.

Biografía del autor

Elizabeth Gaskell (Londres, 1810 Alton, Hampshire, 1865). Es una de las escritoras victorianas más relevantes y queridas de Inglaterra. Huérfana de madre desde pequeña, fue a vivir con su tía a Knutsford, una pequeña ciudad rural como la que se describe en este relato, donde tuvo una infancia plácida y feliz. Se casó con un ministro de la capilla unitaria de Cross Street y se mudaron a Manchester. La llegada al norte de Inglaterra, más industrializado, fue un choque muy fuerte para ella, que quiso reflejar en sus obras el impacto del progreso en las tranquilas sociedades rurales de Inglaterra.