New York Times Book Review
Barker proves herself an impeccable editor of family papers we are all the richer for possessing.

The Atlantic Monthly
Provides a real sense of what those strange, brilliant people were like-simultaneously withdrawn from life and passionately interested in it.

Book Description
Upon its publication in 1995, Juliet Barker's The Brontës was deemed a monumental achievement that set a new standard in literary biography; it garnered rave reviews and was cited as a New York Times Notable Book of 1995 and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 1995. In The Brontës: A Life in Letters, the much anticipated follow-up to that landmark biography, Barker uses newly discovered letters and manuscripts, some appearing in print for the first time, to reveal the authentic voices of the three novelist sisters. The letters detail the siblings' self-absorbed childhood, highlighted by wild, imaginative games; the years of struggling to earn a living in uncongenial occupations before they took the literary world by storm; the terrible marring of that success as Branwell, Emily, and Anne died tragically young; the final years as Charlotte, battling against grief, loneliness, and ill health, emerged from anonymity to take her place in literary society.

In The Brontës: A Life in Letters, Juliet Barker has produced a work of impeccable scholarship but also a story as dramatic, and undeniably readable as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

"Barker proves herself an impeccable editor of family papers we are all the richer for possessing." (New York Times Book Review)

"Provides a real sense of what those strange, brilliant people were like." (The Atlantic Monthly)

About the Author
Juliet Barker is the author of six books, including the acclaimed biography, The Brontës. She is the editor of Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia and spent six years as curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Barker's selection of letters reveals the authentic voices of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, as well as their brother, Branwell, and father, Reverend Patrick Bronte. Charlotte was a letter-writer of supreme ability, ranging from facetious notes and intimate gossip to artfully composed pages of literary criticism, while Emily and Anne remain tantalizingly evasive, as few of their letters are extant. The letters detail the siblings' strange, self-absorbed childhood, highlighted by wild imaginative games and the years of struggle to earn a living before Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall took the literary world by storm. The letters continue through the final years and the terrible marring of success as one by one Branwell, Emily, and Anne died tragically young and as Charlotte, battling against grief, loneliness and ill-health, emerged from anonymity to take her place in London literary society and, finally, found all too brief happiness in marriage to her father's curate.

SYNOPSIS

This much anticipated follow-up to the landmark biography The Brontës includes newly discovered letters and manuscripts to create an absorbing story.

FROM THE CRITICS

Atlantic Monthly

The Brontes: A Life in Letters provides a real sense of what those strange, brilliant people were like.

Atlantic Monthly

Provides a real sense of what those strange,brilliant people were like—simultaneously withdrawn from life and passionately interested in it.

New York Times Book Review

Barker proves herself an impeccable editor of family papers we are all the richer for possessing.

Booknews

Collects the correspondence of the three novelist sisters as well as their brother and father. The bulk of the letters are from Charlotte, since few of the letters of Emily and Anne are extant. The letters are addressed to publishers, writers including William Wordsworth, suitors, editors, members of the clergy, academics, and friends. Includes a chronology of the writers' lives.

The New Yorker