FOR FURTHER READING
Charlotte Bronte
CORRESPONDENCE
Barker, Juliet, ed. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002. This readily available paperback edition is an excellent starter for those interested in exploring the Brontës’ correspondence.
Smith, Margaret, ed. The Letters of Charlotte Brontë. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995-2004. This long-awaited, scrupulously annotated edition is the most reliable source of Charlotte Brontë’s letters.
Wise, T. J., and J. A. Symington, eds. The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence. 1932; 4 vols., Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1980. Although sometimes unreliable, this remains the most comprehensive source of letters by and to the Brontës.
WORKS
Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. 2 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987—1991.The most comprehensive collection of the juvenilia.
Winnifrith, Tom, ed. The Poems of Charlotte Brontë. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.
For those looking to venture beyond Brontë’s prose writings.
BIOGRAPHIES
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. A meticulously researched history of the Brontë family.
Fraser, Rebecca. Charlotte Brontë. London: Methuen London, 1988. Highly readable and reliable.
Gérin, Winifred. Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. A watershed biography that remains unsurpassed in its combination of breadth of coverage and critical insight.
Gordon, Lyndall. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life. New York: W W Norton, 1995. A perceptive, impressionistic bio-critical account.
CRITICISM
Allot, Miriam, ed. The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. Contemporary reactions to Brontë’s work.
Moglen, Helene. Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived. New York: Norton, 1976. Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
OTHER
Alexander, Christine, and Margaret Smith, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Brontës. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A remarkably detailed and scholarly compendium of facts relating to the Brontës’ lives and works.
Pollard, Arthur. The Landscape of the Brontës. New York: E. P Dutton, 1988. Contains a trove of photographs illustrating places the Brontës lived, visited, and featured in their novels.
Elizabeth Gaskell
CORRESPONDENCE
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell. Edited by J. A. V Chapple and Arthur Pollard. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1966.
BIOGRAPHIES
Easson, Angus. Elizabeth Gaskell. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Uglow, Jenny. Elizabeth Gaskelclass="underline" A Habit of Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1993. Detailed and engaging bio-critical study.
CRITICISM
D’Albertis, Deirdre. Dissembling Fictions: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social Text. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Easson, Angus. Elizabeth Gaskelclass="underline" The Critical Heritage. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. A collection of contemporary reviews of Gaskell’s work.
Other Works Cited in the Introduction
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. New York and London: Norton, 1987. . Villette. 1853. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
a
John Tiplady Carrodus (1836—1895), a child prodigy violinist born at Keighley, Yorkshire.
b
The tablet is in error. Anne Brontë was twenty-nine when she died.
c
Alphonse de Lamartine, Lajos Kossuth, and Henrik Dembinsky were nationalists active in the French, Hungarian, and Polish revolutionary movements of 1848.
d
Critical consensus is that this should read “bed plays.”
e
Hugh Blair, a Scottish Presbyterian preacher, lectured and wrote about writing style. His Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) was translated into many European languages.
f
Elizabeth Rowe, Friendship in Death: In Twenty Letters, from the Dead to the Living (1728).
g
Walter Scott, Scottish poet and novelist, wrote the novel Kenilworth (1821).
h
“Jane Eyre,” Vol. I., page 20.
i
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), early epistolary novelist, author of Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1747-1748), and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-1754).
j
Gaskell is mistaken; Brontë wrote to Hartley Coleridge (see endnote 6 to volume I, chapter VIII), not Wordsworth.
k
Mr. Collins, curate at Keighley, and William Weightman (see endnote 11 to volume I, chapter VIII).
l
M. is Mary Taylor, and G. is Gomersal, her home. B. is Ellen Nussey’s home, Brookroyd.
m
Taylor, Mary’s sister.
n
The Château de Kokelberg was the Brussels finishing school attended by Mary and Martha Taylor.
o
Scott describes the sport, “Shooting at the Popinjay,” “as an ancient game formerly practised with archery, but at this period (1679) with fire arms. This was the figure of a bird decked with parti-coloured feathers, so as to resemble a popinjay or parrot. It was suspended to a pole, and served for a mark at which the competitors discharged their fusees and carbines in rotation, at the distance of seventy paces. He whose ball brought down the mark held the proud title of Captain of the Popinjay for the remainder of the day, and was usually escorted in triumph to the most respectable change-house in the neighbourhood, where the evening was closed with conviviality, conducted under his auspices, and, if he was able to maintain it, at his expense.”—Old Mortality.
p
Catherine Wooler, one of the sisters who ran the school Brontë attended at Roe Head. (see endnote 1 to volume I, chapter VI).
q
Devoirs (no accent) are composition exercises.
r
Peter the Hermit (c.1050-1115), a leader of the First Crusade (begun in 1096).
s
She was nourished on the Bible (French).
t
The “long vacation” (French) ran from mid-August to October.