Charlotte Brontë

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What to expect

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Charlotte Brontë: A Life written and read by Claire Harman.

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 the definitive biography of one of Britain's best loved writers.

Critics Review

  • An extraordinary book, crammed with scholarship and glittering with trivia . . . Harman’s book offers so many delights . . . This is a fantastic compendium

    Independent on Sunday on 'Jane's Fame'
  • A shrewd but unstuffy critic, Harman’s prose rings with good sense, affection and humour… [She] manages to be not only scholarly, but indecently entertaining.

    Daily Mail on 'Jane's Fame'
  • Rich and colourful…Harman’s book is a delight from beginning to end… This superb biography not only handles the familiar material with flair but goes further than previous biographies

    Sunday Times on 'Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography'

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