I nominate
The Life of Charlotte Brontė by Elizabeth Gaskell published 2 years after Charlotte's death. I think it has an interesting place in history as a biographical study. I am inspired to read it because one of my friends who grew up in Yorkshire highly recommended the BBC series To Walk Invisible The Brontė Sisters. Here's the US link about the series on PBS Masterpiece. Also I watched a travel show recently that visited Haworth village.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/...ronte-sisters/
From Goodreads:
Quote:
'Wild, strong hearts, and powerful minds, were hidden under an enforced propriety and regularity of demeanour'
Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontė was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle 'An Autobiography'. It recounts Charlotte Brontė's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work--the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist--explored the nature of Charlotte's genius and almost single-handedly created the Brontė myth.
'It will stand in the first rank, of Biographies, till the end of time'--Patrick Brontė
'A classic in its own right, still read today as one of the great works of Victorian literature'--Lucasta Miller
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