The Life of Charlotte Brontë

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell is the influential first biography of Charlotte Brontë. Relying on multiple first hand testimonies and Gaskell's own memories of Brontë, its subjectivity was challenged immediately on publication and while its integrity is contested among scholars, it remains a significant source for all subsequent writing on the Brontë family. Its first edition, published in the spring of 1857, was withdrawn after complaints of slander were made to its publisher Smith, Elder & Co., prompting them to issue censored second and third editions within five months. Despite initial controversy it was praised by contemporary critics, inspired literary tourism to the Yorkshire setting of the book which continues to the present, and anticipated social and cultural discussions about the situation of women in male-dominated cultures half a century before the formal women's movements began in Britain. Now it is considered a important text that expanded the possibilities of the biographical genre and established the lives, as well as the work, of Brontë family as notable cultural subjects.