Claire Harman’s Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart marks the bicentennial of the iconic author’s birth and has been hailed as the literary biography of 2016. Drawing on correspondence unavailable to previous biographers, Harman reveals that Charlotte’s life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels. Raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school, Charlotte also endured the deaths of all five of her beloved siblings. As an adult, she was haunted by a great and unrequited love—one that tortured her but also inspired some of the most moving, intense, and revolutionary novels ever written in the English language.
A literary visionary and feminist trailblazer, Charlotte was the driving force behind the Brontë family. A bestselling female author in a world still dominated by men, she wrote books featuring heroines inspired by herself and her life, fiercely intelligent women burning with hidden passions. Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart provides uniquely intimate and complex insights into one of history’s best-loved writers.
Claire Harman has taught English at Oxford University and creative writing at Columbia University. Her bestselling book Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World is a remarkable biography of the writer’s lasting cultural influence.