San Antonio College Library

"Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte's first biographer, attempted to clear Charlotte of the charges of passionate immorality that were leveled at her - as an unmarried woman no less. Rebecca Fraser, 130 years later, places Charlotte's life within the framework of contemporary attitudes towards woman, and addresses how attitudes and perceptions of Charlotte have (or haven't) changed since the Victorian era. An invaluable contribution to Bronte scholarship,...

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as like the feeling of entering the confessional in which she sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology-'that roar which lies on the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular a realist novelist for whom art exists...

"A groundbreaking biography that places an obsessive, unrequited love at the heart of the writer's life story, transforming her from the tragic figure we have previously known into a smoldering Jane Eyre. Famed for her beloved novels, Charlotte Brontë has been known as well for her insular, tragic family life. The genius of this biography is that it delves behind this image to reveal a life in which loss and heartache existed alongside rebellion...

"Believe no one's representations about me, " George Eliot wrote a friend during the most painful scandal of her life; "for there is not a single person who is in a position to make a true representation." In a book that embodies a new approach to literary biography, Rosemarie Bodenheimer demonstrates how Eliot's letters and fiction together represent the real life of Mary Ann Evans, the complex and deeply appealing woman beneath the male pseudonym....