Biography of Charlotte Brontë

Read: Poetry foundation Charlotte BronteBrontë's poems after her return to Roe Head reflect her longing for home and for Angria as well as her anxious need to reconcile her desire to write with the necessity of continuing to teach to earn a living. The most famous of these poems, sometimes anthologized as "Retrospection," begins poignantly:      We wove a web in childhood

A web of sunny air

We dug a spring in infancy

Of water pure and fair

We sowed in youth a mustard seed

We cut an almond rod

We are now grown up to riper age

Are they withered in the sod. . . .
The poem continues for 177 more lines, developing into vividly realized scenes featuring the Duke of Zamorna. The poem then breaks into a retrospective prose narrative that is rudely interrupted by "a voice that dissipated all the charm" as a student "thrust her little rough black head into [her teacher's] face" to demand, "Miss Brontë what are you thinking about?"--a striking example of the incompatibility of Brontë's inner, imaginative life with her actual experience while at Roe Head. 

More ideas for reading:
BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

• Thomas J. Wise, A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of the Members of the Brontë Family(London: Clay, 1917).
• Jami Parkison, "Charlotte Brontë: A Bibliography of 19th Century Criticism," Bulletin of Bibliography, 35 (1978): 73-83.
• G. Anthony Yablon and John R. Turner, A Brontë Bibliography(London: Hodgkins, 1978; Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1978).
• Anne Passel, Charlotte and Emily Brontë: An Annotated Bibliography(New York: Garland, 1979).
• Christine Alexander, A Bibliography of the Manuscripts of Charlotte Brontë(Westport, Conn.: Meckler, for The Brontë Society, 1982).
• Rebecca W. Crump, Charlotte and Emily Brontë: A Reference Guide, (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982-1986).

BIOGRAPHIES:

• Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, third edition, revised, 2 volumes (London: Smith, Elder, 1857).
• Clement Shorter, The Brontës: Life and Letters, 2 volumes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908).
• Thomas James Wise and John Alexander Symington, eds., The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence, The Shakespeare Head Brontë, 4 volumes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1932).
• Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
• Margot Peters, Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Brontë(New York: Doubleday, 1975).
• Rebecca Fraser, Charlotte Brontë(London: Methuen, 1988).
• Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life(London: Chatto & Windus, 1994; New York: Norton, 1995).
• Juliet Barker, The Brontës (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).

REFERENCES:

• Christine Alexander, The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë(Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
• Miriam Allott, The Brontës: The Critical Heritage(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
• Carol Bock, "Gender and Poetic Tradition: The Shaping of Charlotte Brontë's Literary Career," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 7 (1988): 49-67.
• Sue Lonoff, "Charlotte Brontë's Belgian Essays: The Discourse of Empowerment," Victorian Studies, 32 (1989): 387-409.
• Virginia Woolf, "'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights,'" in her The Common Reader, first series (London: Hogarth Press, 1925), pp. 196-204.