Free Brontës by Juliet Barker

Juliet Barker is an internationally recognised expert on the Brontës and medieval chivalry. She was born in Yorkshire and has lived within a few miles of Haworth all her life. Educated at Bradford Girls’ Grammar School and St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she gained a doctorate in medieval history, she was curator and librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth from 1983 to 1989. Her revolutionary and prize-winning biography The Brontës was the result of eleven years’ research in archives throughout the world. Her ability to combine ground-breaking scholarly research with a highly readable and accessible style has made her a bestselling literary biographer and medieval historian: her Agincourt was the fourth bestselling history book of 2006. Awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Bradford in 1999 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2001, she is married with two children, and still lives in Yorkshire.
    For more information, see her website, www.julietbarker.co.uk
    â€˜An outstanding achievement, a magnificent portrait which not only contains a wealth of important material, but is also a delight to read … definitive … hard to imagine it ever being surpassed’ Rebecca Fraser, The Times
    â€˜A monumental book: patient, thoughtful, sustained and bound to become indispensable’ Andrew Motion, TLS
    â€˜A joy to read … The Brontës is a magnificent achievement: the finest biography I have read for years’ Susan Elkin, Literary Review
    â€˜Quite simply the most astounding and revolutionary book about the Brontës ever written’ Yorkshire Post
    â€˜A splendid account of the whole Brontë family … full of life and sparks’ Jane Gardam, Spectator
    â€˜Ruthlessly meticulous revisionist history’ Hermione Lee, Sunday Times
    â€˜Powerful … there can be no doubt about Juliet Barker’s contribution to Brontë scholarship’ Janet Barron, New Statesman
    â€˜A contribution of enormous value to future generations’ Lucasta Miller, Independent
    â€˜Magnificent’ Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

Also by Juliet Barker
    Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417–1450
    The Deafening Sound of Silent Tears:
    The Story of Caring For Life
    Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle
    Wordsworth: A Life in Letters
    Wordsworth: A Life
    The Brontës: A Life in Letters
    The Brontës: Selected Poems
    Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829–35
    The Tournament in England, c.1100–1400
    Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and
    Pageant in the Middle Ages

T HE
B RONTËS
    Juliet Barker

    PEGASUS BOOKS
    NEW YORK LONDON

For James
Edward and Sophie



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
    A new edition of The Brontës is long overdue. It was a revolutionary book when it was first published in 1994 and since then it has become the standard biography of this extraordinary family. Despite this, popular myths about the Brontës have proved astonishingly difficult to quash. It was therefore important to me not only that my biography should remain in print but also that it should be revised and updated so that it could not be undermined by failing to take into account the huge advances in Brontë studies which have taken place since 1994.
    Two monumental works of meticulous scholarship deserve especial mention: Margaret Smith’s The Letters of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford, 1995–2004) and Victor Neufeldt’s The Works of Patrick Branwell Brontë (New York, 1997–9) provide indispensable tools for the biographer, collecting, re-dating and transcribing manuscripts scattered throughout public and private collections in Great Britain and the United States. I wish they had been available when I was struggling to date Charlotte’s letters or assemble a coherent narrative from the morass of Branwell’s juvenilia. Sue Lonoff s The Belgian Essays: Charlotte and Emily Brontë (New Haven and