The Brontes [Hardcover]

Juliet Barker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

A history of the Bronte+a5 family is based on eleven years of research and newly discovered letters by each family member, challenging currently accepted portraits of the patriarchal Patrick and revealing Charlotte's ruthless nature.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Somewhere in this remarkably detailed and insightful biography of the Bronte family?focusing specifically on the father, Patrick, and his four gifted children?Charlotte is "accused of seeing in the dark." It can be said that Barker, who has produced other works on the Brontes (e.g., Selected Poems, Tuttle, 1993), has illuminated the dark surrounding the lives and works of the entire clan, using original manuscripts, letters, essays, juvenilia, and newspapers of the time. Patrick is seen as a caring father and a writer of merit and literary influence on his children. Branwell's underrated writings are shown to be a great inspiration for Charlotte. According to Barker, none of the girls were victims. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne wrote of brutal events, but certainly they were not always autobiographical. True, Charlotte was dominating, Emily was dependent on fantasy, and sweet Anne had a backbone of steel. Charlotte, when in good health, referred to herself as being "fat." Barker has written a very fat book. For literary collections.?Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Neither Charlotte, Emily, Anne, nor Branwell Brontelived past the age of 38, yet they left an impression on English literature that has fully occupied biographers, many of whom have portrayed the Brontes as doomed romantics, held captive for all of their adult years by a cruel, widowed curate father in the wasteland of the Yorkshire moors. But Barker, a past curator of the BronteParsonage Museum, tells a different tale with admirable objectivity; her extensively documented alternative view is based on new material, including family letters. Convincingly, she portrays Haworth, the town where the Brontes passed their lives, not as the traditional barrens, but as a fairly active agricultural and mercantile locale, subject to clerical, political, and economic struggles. (Her accounts of bad sanitary conditions and rife disease are especially compelling.) Patrick Bronte, in her perspective, emerges as an impressively rational and steadfastly affectionate father, not the egregiously high-minded belligerent of lore. As for the four siblings, Barker takes care not to presume or sentimentalize. She methodically outlines Branwell's notorious decline into drug and alcohol addiction, suggesting its consequences for other family members; offers Anne, the least appreciated of the writers, as, in some respects, the most adventurous in her pursuit of realism; and considers Charlotte critically yet sympathetically as an imperious, often manipulative literary majordomo whose unrequited love for her Belgian language teacher ran parallel in its self-destructive energy to her brother's dangerous liaison with an opportunistic married woman. Despite the book's saturation in period detail, the cumulative effect of Barker's 800-odd pages is oddly contemporary: a legendary literary quartet steps out of the storybooks with a distinctly welcome, unemotional clarity. Molly McQuade

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1003 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; First US Edition edition (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312134452
• ISBN-13: 978-0312134457
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #977,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last biography of the Brontes?, April 16, 2007

By 

Bruce Oksol "oksol" (San Antonio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Brontes (Hardcover)

Regardless of one's opinions about Juliet Barker's impression of Charlotte, and the rest of the Brontes, one can argue neither with the credibility of the author nor with her incredible research. The author has lived within a few miles of Haworth her entire life; was librarian and curator at the Bronte Parsonage Museum for six years; and researched this book for 11 years before publishing. The biography is 830 pages long, with an additional 150 pages of notes, and 30 pages of index. I would recommend this to those who are already well acquainted with the Brontes. It won't change your own personal myth of the Brontes, but it will shed light on trivia that might help explain background, names, and places in the various Bronte novels. For example, Charlotte's pseudonym, Currer Bell, now makes sense, though I disagree with Juliet's suggestion. This is much more than a biography; Juliet Barker includes the politics of the time, origins of modern Christian religious offshoots, the labor movement (the Luddites), and even the architecture (for example, the Late Perpendicular movement). Barker's description of the English landscape is wonderful, if a bit stilted. (When one is as emotionally linked with Yorkshire as I am, it's hard not be judgmental on descriptions of that wonderful place.) This book was meant to be read by the fire, on a cold and dark winter night, preferably in Haworth, with a soul mate who appreciates Yorkshire and all it has to offer.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Long, somewhat ponderous and yet informative, July 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Brontes (Hardcover)

Barker is a meticulous scholar, and I enjoyed her notes as much as her main text. Her descriptions of the Bronte's home, village, and schooling were lively, engaging, and believable. The book educates, occasionally entertains, and sometimes annoys.

I knew nothing of any of the Brontes before I read the book: that's why, in fact, I read the book. Since we have more documentation about Charlotte, and some of Charlotte's comments aren't so nice, then Charlotte gets the brunt of Barker's judgement. Since we seem to know so little about what actually happened inside Anne's head, it is possible to canonize Anne, as Barker seems to do. We can make Anne what we want: she didn't tell us otherwise--the way Charlotte did. Why, for instance, did Barker expect Charlotte to "do" something for her brother, and yet Barker has no castigation for the other siblings? I'd hate to think of my personality being judged by the sometimes petty and selfish things I write in my own! journal; and I would like to extend the same indulgence to Charlotte.

On a positive note, though, I admire Barker's gutsiness for taking a position about Charlotte at all. I liked Barker's revisionist attitude toward the interpretation of all the Bronte's works. Perhaps Barker's devotion to *all* of the Bronte's work--not just Charlotte's--will bring more interest in Agnes Grey or the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. That would be fabulous.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Brontes: a definitive literary biography, October 22, 2006

By 

J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Brontes (Paperback)

I first read this book in 1995. I only recently bought my own copy.

In this book, Juliet Barker provides a feast of information about the lives, times and writings of the Brontes. She is not the first to traverse this territory, but I believe that she does it more comprehensively than anyone else. The book itself is both a delight to read as well as a wonderful reference.

My only (slight) quibble is the greater focus on Charlotte. Perhaps this is inevitable: Charlotte did outlive her siblings, and published more novels.

I am biased. I have been a fan of the Brontes (especially Emily and Anne) for over 40 years.

Highly recommended to all Bronte fans.


Jennifer Cameron-Smith


Please note: this review was first published on July 28 2006