biography
| name: |
Brontë, Charlotte
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pseudonym Currer Bell
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pronunciation:
[brontee]
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1816–55)
|
| biography:
| Novelist and poet, born in Thornton, West Yorkshire. She worked as a teacher at her old school, but gave up this post and two others as governess. Back at Haworth, she and her two sisters planned to start a school of their own and, to augment their qualifications, Charlotte and Emily attended the Pensionnat Héger in Brussels (1842). Their plans foundered, however, and Charlotte returned to Brussels as an English teacher (1843–4). Her chance discovery of Emily's remarkable poems led to the joint publication under pseudonyms of the three sisters' Poems (1846). Her first novel, The Professor, did not achieve publication until after her death (1857). Her masterpiece, Jane Eyre (1847), received instant acclaim. It was followed by Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). She married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, in 1854, and died during pregnancy in the following year, leaving the fragment of another novel, Emma. Two stories, The Secret and Lily Hart, were published for the first time in 1978. |
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