A Life

Charlotte Brontë

The definitive biography of an extraordinary novelist, by acclaimed literary biographer Claire Harman 
 
'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day . . .' With these words Charlotte Brontë began Jane Eyre and changed English literature irrevocably. 
 
Claire Harman's landmark biography provides a bold new view of one of Britain's best loved writers, uncovering an inner life that touched the furthest extremes of human emotion. 
 
Harman shows us an intense and troubled young woman from an astonishingly creative family, whose early works were produced in total secrecy. Struggling against the conventional limitations of both life and literature, Charlotte created a new kind of heroine which both shocked and inspired her Victorian contemporaries. Love, loss, ambition and heartbreak: the anonymous author poured everything into her ground-breaking books, but lived it first. 
 
'Harman [is] a master-storyteller in her own right. Her account of Bronte's life is a level-headed, highly readable and always intelligent. A delight from start to finish' Sunday Times 
 
'Subtle, measured. Full of insight into Bronte's fiery intellect as well as the tragic intensity of her experience' Helen Dunmore, Observer 
 
'Three rounds of applause... a superb retelling of Charlotte's story' Mark Bostridge, Spectator

Harman's sane, unshowy re-telling is exactly right for the bicentenary next April. The result is a retooled classic biographical narrative, shipshape and serviceable for the next 200 years

Elegantly written, consistently perceptive...[Harman] succeeds in bringing Charlotte back to life in all her spiky vulnerability

This is a comprehensive biography to enjoy and admire. Harman writes well and she is a fine and sensitive critic

Harman... portrays Bronte's complexity and dark genius in elegant prose with deep human sympathy

Superb retelling of Charlotte's story (...) admirably concise

Harman tells [Charlotte's] story with quick wit, a sharp sympathy, and a fire and fury of her own

Full of pleasing and piquant detail, scraps of passing recollection assembled from the various lives and letters in which the Brontes featured and from which we might reconstruct their world

Elegant, sensitive, beautifully paced and moving. [Claire Harman] has... produced a work that is affirmative, edifying, inspiring and humane

Revelatory (...) adds freshness and texture to her account with original speculations. As someone who once wrote a book about the Brontës' afterlives, few people can have read as many biographies of them as I have. I thought I was Brontë-ed out, but reading this book-which will be equally accessible to someone coming to Charlotte for the first time-has drawn me back in

Three rounds of applause...for Claire Harman's superb retelling of Charlotte's story

[An] excellent new bicentennial biography....Ms. Harman writes with warmth and a fine understanding of Ms. Brontë's literary significance. Above all, she is a storyteller, with a sense of pace and timing, relish for a good scene and a wry sense of humour

A vigorous new biography (...) Harman does a splendid job

A substantial biography (...) that lets the disparate pieces speak for themselves

Harman renders her daring novels fresh, interweaving what shocked critics then with what surprises us still

Prepare to suffer similar time-loss at the hands of Harman, Brontë's most recent biographer and a master storyteller in her own right. Level-headed, highly readable and always intelligent, Harman's account of Brontë's life and work is a delight from start to finish

A subtle, measured biography, full of insight into Bronte's fiery intellect as well as the tragic intensity of her experience

Harman brings a fresh eye to many of the same papers studied by Gaskell to compile her Charlotte Brontë: A Life. The Gothic atmosphere and heart-breaking details remain, but Harman achieves a great feat by making the story seem new again

Claire Harman is the award-winning biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1989), Fanny Burney (2000) and Robert Louis Stevenson (2005) and the author of the best-selling Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (2009). She writes regularly for the literary press on both sides of the Atlantic and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. 
Her most recent work is Charlotte Bronte: A Life.

Raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors, watching five beloved siblings sicken and die, haunted by unrequited love: Charlotte Brontë's life has all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. 
 
Charlotte was a literary visionary, a feminist trailblazer and the driving force behind the whole Brontë family. She pushed Emily to publish Wuthering Heights and took charge of their precarious finances when her feckless brother turned to opium. In Jane Eyre she introduced the world to a brand new kind of heroine, modelled on herself: quiet but fiercely intelligent, burning with passion and potential. 
 
This is a truly gripping and illuminating account of one of our best-loved novelists.

A Biography

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 
 
'One of the most shamefully under-read great British authors of the past 100 years' Sarah Waters 
 
The poet Sylvia Townsend Warner rose to sudden fame with the publication of her classic feminist novel Lolly Willowes in 1926, but never became a conventional member of London literary life, pursuing instead a long writing career in her own individualistic manner. Cheerfully defying social norms of the day, Warner lived in an openly homosexual relationship with the poet Valentine Ackland for almost forty years. Together, they were committed members of the Communist party and travelled twice to Spain during the Civil War, but Warner paid for her outspokenness with years of neglect, and channelled much of her emotional and intellectual energy into letters, poems and heart-breaking diaries that remained unpublished during her lifetime. In this enthralling and enlightening biography, Claire Harman tells the story of Warner's remarkable life and restores her to her rightful place as one of Britain's most unique and brilliant writers. 
 
"As passionate and truthful, elegant and enchanting as its subject." George D Painter 
 
"Harman skilfully weaves Sylvia's stories and letters into the biography, and the brilliance of the samples on display constantly takes you aback... Outstanding" Sunday Times

Claire Harman turns her skilled and thoughtful biographer's eye to Sylvia Townsend Warner. 
 
Sylvia Townsend Warner was a twentieth century English novelist, poet and active member of the Communist party in Britain. also spent time as a musicologist and composer and lived the majority of her adult life in an opening homosexual relationship with her lover, Valentine Ackland. This biography makes use of her previously unpublished diaries, as well as those of Valentine, to draw an intimate and lively picture of an extraordinary twentieth century woman.

Claire Harman

A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime

On a spring morning in 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a household of servants awoke to discover that their unobtrusive master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed. 
 
The whole of London, from monarch to maidservants, was scandalized by the unfolding drama of such a shocking murder, but behind it was another story, a work of fiction. For when the culprit eventually confessed, he claimed his actions were the direct result of reading the best-selling crime-novel of the day. This announcement amazed the key literary figures of the time, from Thackeray to Dickens, and posed the question: can a work of fiction do real harm?

Claire Harman

Murder by the Book

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