Claire Harman on Charlotte Bronte

On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, Claire Harman’s stunning new biography brings the drama and tragedy of her life into vivid colour. Charlotte was a literary visionary, a feminist trailblazer and the driving force behind the whole Brontë family. She encouraged her sister Emily to publish Wuthering Heights when no-one else believed in her talent. She took charge of the family’s precarious finances when her brilliant but feckless brother Branwell succumbed to opium addiction. She travelled from Yorkshire to Europe to the bright lights of London, met some of the most brilliant literary minds of her generation (Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray), and became a bestselling female author in a world still dominated by men. We cannot wait to hear about one of our most enduringly popular novelists from the point of view of a biographer has engaged so deeply with her life and her relationship with the people and world around her.