Another dimension to understanding the Brontes

books:


	• The Brontes: A Life in Letters Juliet Barker Overlook Hardcover, 1998 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fascinating

Having purchased this book on a whim, I was delighted to find it so captivating. Barker lets the letters speak for themselves, only occasionally jumping in to clue the reader in on the context of the letters.

The book is broken into chapters by groups of years or phases of happenings with the Brontes. The first part of the book is filled with the letters about the happenings and dreams of the Brontes. In the latter half of the book you get a strong sense of Charlotte's growing isolation as her family vanishes around her in a very brief period of time.

The tragedy of this volume is that there aren't more letters from Emily, Anne, and Branwell. However, through Charlotte's letters you get a strong sense of what her siblings were like (or at least Charlotte's perception of them).

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is researching the Brontes, or anyone who is just curious, as I was. It has made me want to go back and read Barker's first book on the Brontes, as well as others.

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Engrossing!!!

It is one thing to read a biographical account of the terribly short lives of the Brontes, it is quite another to read Charlotte's first-hand account of losing the people dearest to her. As I read her letters, I could sense the solitude at Haworth, feel the miserable weather, and hear the hollow ticking of the clock following each passing. The book is not all somber though. I am a new fan, and this book has left an indellible impression on me.

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The best book yet

This is the one that, no matter how many other books you've read about the Brontes, is the best ever. The writer of this book doesn't hoard her knowledge, but shares it in such a way that the reader will be amazed that so much information has never before been made available to us common-folk. This book allows the reader to interpret, rather than tangle through spider webs.

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Another dimension to understanding the Brontes

Those of us who admire the Brontes and their works owe a considerable debt to Juliet Barker. The letters provide a window into the lives of this talented family - in their own voices.

Ms Barker has provided just enough information around the letters to enable the reader to understand the context. For those readers who want more information, I recommend Ms Barkers biography 'The Brontes'.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Highly recommended

I recommend this book to anyone who is a Bronte fan. Because the letters were written mostly by Charlotte, they are very eloquent and narrative in their descriptions. In her letters, the reader can relate to her feelings of loss and loneliness when Branwell, Emily, and finally Anne passed away. It is truly sad that these 3 sisters were not able to live long lives, and that Emily and Anne did not receive the accolade they deserved while they were alive.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Upon its publication in 1995, Juliet Barker's The Brontës was deemed a monumental achievement that set a new standard in literary biography; it garnered rave reviews and was cited as a New York Times Notable Book of 1995 and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 1995. In The Brontës: A Life in Letters, the much anticipated follow-up to that landmark biography, Barker uses newly discovered letters and manuscripts, some appearing in print for the first time, to reveal the authentic voices of the three novelist sisters. The letters detail the siblings' self-absorbed childhood, highlighted by wild, imaginative games; the years of struggling to earn a living in uncongenial occupations before they took the literary world by storm; the terrible marring of that success as Branwell, Emily, and Anne died tragically young; the final years as Charlotte, battling against grief, loneliness, and ill health, emerged from anonymity to take her place in literary society.

In The Brontës: A Life in Letters, Juliet Barker has produced a work of impeccable scholarship but also a story as dramatic, and undeniably readable as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

"Barker proves herself an impeccable editor of family papers we are all the richer for possessing." (New York Times Book Review)

"Provides a real sense of what those strange, brilliant people were like." (The Atlantic Monthly)

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