A Life of Emily Bronte [Paperback]

Edward Chitham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1993

In his biography of Emily Bronte, Edward Chitham uses neglected material to explore the origins of her inspirations and her conflicts. He looks particularly at her childhood, at her relationship with her family, and develops his previous research into the influence of her father's Irish background. Her contacts with people outside the family are also closely examined.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Virginia Woolf declared that biographers must blend the granite of hard fact with the rainbow of personality. If so, then this "life" is a pile of stone chips wrapped in fog. The fault is not entirely Chitham's; indisputable facts about Emily Bronte are scarce, and he is justifiably careful to avoid unbridled speculation. But his caution leads him to belabor his points mercilessly, to milk every possible drop of inference or conjecture from his sources. The result is a tedious book posing as the life of a flesh and blood woman but in reality a plodding account of one biographer's problems handling scanty evidence. Michael Edmonds, State Historical Soc. of Wisconsin Lib., Madison
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Pub; Reprint edition (January 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631186298
• ISBN-13: 978-0631186298
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,817,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars `In life, she took few pains to be understood.', August 29, 2008

By 

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

This review is from: A Life of Emily Bronte (Hardcover)

Many will be familiar with the Bronte sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Many readers will know Emily Bronte as the author of `Wuthering Heights': a novel which is probably loved and loathed in equal measure. Some of us also are familiar with Emily's poetry. But of Emily herself we tend to know very little directly and this makes her fascinating to those of us who seek to try to understand how a young woman (barely 30 years old when she died) could create `Wuthering Heights' and the contrasting natural worlds in her poetry.

In writing this biography (first published in 1987) Edward Chitham readily acknowledges that Emily sets the biographer a difficult task. In writing this book, Edward Chitham has undertaken an approach which he calls `investigative biography'. He moves from the known facts, through the aspects of the world that Emily must have seen by dint of her existence in time and place, to theories and their supporting bases of evidence. So, what do we learn from this book? In some ways, there are even more questions to explore but it seems unlikely now that we will ever obtain a complete and accurate picture of Emily Bronte. To me this seems entirely appropriate: Emily was secretive, inhabited a rich inner world and seemingly made limited concessions to the `real world'. In short, and to quote Mr Chitham: `[..]`Wuthering Heights' is in all ways consistent with Emily's life as we know it, and in particular with her inner life, as that emerges before us in her rare oracular statements, and especially in her poetry.'

This book will be of interest to those seeking to gain additional insights into Emily. It includes a valuable select bibliography to which I would add the books published since (during the 1990s) by Juliet Barker.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith