Charlotte Bronte Biography

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Elizabeth Gaskell who wrote a biography of Charlotte Bronte published in 1857 named "The Life of Charlotte Bronte."

"Elizabeth Gaskell's astonishingly vivid biography of Charlotte Bronte is written with all the sweep, color and fullness of a great Victorian novelist, which is exactly what Gaskell was.  She was also a shrewd journalist.  Based on her own interviews with Charlotte Bronte and a cache of 400 letters from Charlotte's intimate childhood friend Ellen Nussey, the book opens up the strange family life of the (then) obscure Haworth Parsonage. We see the original of Charlotte's Jane Eyre magically emerging but also the haunting, enigmatic figure of Charlotte's sister Emily; the tender Anne Bronte; the opium wrecked brother Branwell; the deeply eccentric father, Rev. Patrick Bronte, who fired guns in his churchyard.  If you wish to get the flavor, just read the chapters that describe Charlotte's fraught relationship  with Emily and Emily's savage handling of her terrifying bull mastiff, Keeper. Charlotte's modern biographer, Claire Harman, says rightly that Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte" first made biography "an imaginative creation," with the force of myth.

A different take on Jane Eyre

Because the Milwaukee Rep is going to be performing Jane Eyre, I thought this might be fun to take a look at a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's book.  It's called Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys.  It was written in 1966.  There was also a 2006 movie.  Here's what a BBC commentator had to say about it in 2016, the 50th anniversary of its publication

"As any English literature student will tell you, Rhys’s iconic prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is rich in motifs and devices both modernist and postmodernist. In giving a voice and an identity to Mr Rochester’s first wife, Antoinette – aka Bertha, the madwoman in the attic – the novel has become a gateway text to post-colonial and feminist theory."

For the entire article go to http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161019-the-book-that-changed-jane-eyre-forever

Books about books and bookstores

A Storied Life of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
In the spirit of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Gabrielle Zevin’s enchanting novel is a love letter to the world of books—and booksellers—that changes our lives by giving us the stories that open our hearts and enlighten our minds.