The Bronte Myth - Softcover

Miller, Lucasta

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400078350 ISBN 13: 9781400078356

Publisher: Anchor, 2005

Synopsis

In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism, and history, The Bronté Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronté became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputations reflected the obsessions of various eras.

When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had been written by young rural spinsters, the Brontés instantly became as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon after their deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into a picturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Ever since, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations of readers–Victorian, Freudian, feminist–to reinterpret them, casting them as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics. In her bewitching “metabiography,” Lucasta Miller follows the twists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront-mania and rescues these three fiercely original geniuses from the distortions of legend.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Following the Brontė sisters through their many reincarnations at the hands of biographers, Lucasta Miller reveals as much about the impossible art of biography as she does about the Brontės themselves. Their first biographer, Mrs Gaskell, transformed their story of literary ambition into one of the great legends of the 19th century, a dramatic tale of three lonely sisters playing out their tragic destiny on top of a windswept moor. Lucasta Miller reveals where this image came from and how it took such a hold on the popular imagination.

Each generation has rewritten the Brontės to reflect changing attitudes - towards the role of the woman writer, towards sexuality, towards the very concept of personality. The Brontė Myth gives vigorous new life to our understanding of the novelists and their culture. It is a witty, erudite and refreshingly unsentimental unravelling of what Henry James described as "the most complete intellectual muddle ever achieved on a literary question by our wonderful public."
From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover:

“A brilliant and riveting examination of the Brontė phenomenon.” – Daily Mail

“A sharp-witted study in literary reputation... Miller supplies a deft and immaculately detailed tracing of the many “constructions” of Charlotte Brontė.” – Joanna Griffiths, Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400078350
• ISBN 13: 9781400078356
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368