Charlotte Brontë and her sisters

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in Thornton, the third of six children. She was born into a literary and intellectual household and the children were encouraged to read and take an interest in the world.

She did not have an easy life:

In 1821, at the age of 5, Charlotte lost her mother to cancer, leaving her father with six children aged eight and under.

In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte's two elder sisters, fell ill at Cowan Bridge school and returned to their home in Haworth, only to die. Charlotte and Emily were then also removed from the school.

In 1848, the year after Jane Eyre was published, Charlotte's sister Emily and her brother Branwell died, while her sister Anne died one year later in 1849. Charlotte herself died in 1855 - while pregnant with her first child.

Clearly she did not have an easy life. Yet, despite all the suffering and despite her short life, she managed to create a wealth of literature. Jane Eyre, The Professor, Villette, Shirley... Quite an achievement! Not to mention Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which the three sisters collaborated on.

This truly was an extraordinary family. Their books can help us understand them, and equally, understanding them and understanding the context they lived in can help us appreciate their books.

For more information on Charlotte Brontë's life visit her biography section with timeline on Crossref-it.info.