Picture Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816, the third daughter of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria. Her brother Patrick Branwell was born in 1817, and her sisters Emily and Anne in 1818 and 1820. In the same year the Brontë family moved to Haworth. Mrs. Brontë died the following year.

In 1824 the four eldest Brontë daughters were enrolled as pupils at the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge. The following year Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest daughters, became ill, left the school and died. Charlotte and Emily, understandably, were brought home.

In 1826 Mr. Brontë brought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Ann, playing with the soldiers, conceived of and began to write in great detail about, an imaginary world which they called Angria.

In 1831 Charlotte became a pupil at the school at Roe Head, but she left the following year to teach her sisters at home. She worked as a governess and attempted, with her sisters to open a school. This venture proved unsuccessful.

In 1846 Charlotte decided to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte also completed The Professor, which was rejected for publication. The following year, however, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Ann’s Agnes Grey were all published, still under the Bell pseudonyms.

In 1848 Charlotte and Ann visited their publishers in London, and revealed the true identities of the ‘Bells’. In the same year Branwell Brontë, by now an alcoholic and a drug addict, died, and Emily died shortly thereafter. Ann died the following year.

In 1849 Charlotte went to London and began to move in literary circles, making the acquaintance of Thackeray and others. In 1850 Charlotte edited her sister’s works, and met Mrs. Gaskell. In 1851she visited the Great Exhibition in London, and attended a series of lectures given by Thackeray.

Charlotte became engaged to Mr Nicholls , the curate at Haworth, and they were married soon after. In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia and died, probably of dehydration.
In 1857 The Professor, which had been written in 1845-46, was published posthumously and Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë was published.