The Brontes

No complaints about the text (although I suspect Barker is a bit overindulgent to Patrick and Arthur). The kindle edition has minimal illustrations, just tiny uncaptioned headpieces at the start of some of the chapters. Amazon don’t seem to have any problem including massive color ads in the Kindle, so where are the actual illustrations for the book they’ve sold me?

I have enjoyed this biography a great deal more than Elizabeth Gaskell's. In fact, Juliet Barker makes contradictory comment throughout her work regarding statements made by Gaskell. For instance, the condition of the schools in which the children were taught are much more developed in Barker's work. "It is easy to fall into the same trap as Mrs. Gaskell and assume that the Bronte children's interests were 'of a sedentary and intellectual nature'...This is only a very small part of the story, and, indeed, in some ways a major distortion of the truth."The reader learns that the order of the Clergy Daughters' School was severe. It practiced public beating and wearing a sign with the inscription “neryakha”. Food was often stale and contaminated, and one day this led to an outbreak of the typhus epidemic. Conditions at the school were terrible, and many students fell ill with fatal ailments, including Mary and Elizabeth. From there, the children were placed in the Roe Head School."Things were different at the Roe Head School. It was everything the Clergy Daughter's School was not. A rather grand three-storey building, wih an ununsual double-bowed frontage, it had been built for the Marriotte family in 1740...and had only a very small number of pupils, apparently between seven and ten....The regime was disciplined by kindly. With so few pupils it was possible to take into account each girl's foibles and capabilities and there is no doubt that Charlotte not only benefied from the education offered, but also actually enjoyed her time at the school." (page 200)

I had purchased the earlier version of the book, the one from the 1990s--1,100 pages--and when this one came out, with about 200 more pages, I was intrigued to read the new material. Amazon put it on sale for $8.98--could not turn it down--well worth the price. I love the Brontes--and their lives have fascinated me as much as their own writings. Juliet Barker is a wonderful writer--she made the Brontes live again--in my mind. I read the first version of this book over 8 days, almost non--stop except for meals and sleep. I've been reading the expanded version with the first one near at hand--a little more slowly--since I have lots more Bronte material, including the juvenilia.

Ms Barker's sizeable effort is more than impressive but only takes off around page 600 when the reasons for the Bronte fame are published; up to that point the book is somewhat tabulatory. The story of this family makes one rue the deterioration of literacy since their day but at the same time we can only be grateful for the scientists who have in the interim given us modern health care. How wistfully one reads the literary levels of those far-off heroines but how compassionately one learns of their suffering, with diseases now more or less extinct.The level of English displayed by the Brontes and their peers (as well as Ms.Barker to be fair) shows how limited our standard of communication has become but then again the fact that old man Bronte outlived all six of his children reminds us stunningly of our physical advantages. The linguistic dexterity of the book’s participants contrasts with their physical discomfort and inconvenience -- I wanted to take all the people in the book home to care for them -- and how I would have loved to have seen the genius in the eyes of the Bronte women, regardless of how pretty they apparently weren’t. What a family. What beings.But a sad tale overall. The lady’s closeness to God was understandable; their preoccupation with the hereafter figured highly for good reason while ours in more comfortable times has collapsed into just the here and now. We are different people from this quiet, long-lost species of the Nineteenth century.Ms. Barker is heavy on documentation but light on style – she doesn’t convey too much drama or spectacle in her sterling effort – maybe there wasn’t any in this legendary story but I still think she fails to impart the scale of the Brontes.Out of the bleak and humdrum came the beauteous and brilliant, out of the inconsequential came the wondrous, out of plain, unnoticed females came novels of insight that reached to the edge of human sensibility, and from the backwater of the drab Yorkshire moors came awarenesses beyond that of the London glitterati. Whoever felt more longingly and unrequitedly than these wonderful girls? The magnitude and histrionics don’t really come across in the book but with an account so comprehensively told it is obviously up to us to infer the wonder of it all. Maybe that’s why it’s Ms. Barker writing about the Brontes rather than the other way round, maybe she leaves all the thunder to them. Or maybe I ask too much, but while I now know a lot more about Charlotte, Emily and Anne they were never quite brought into my living room, tome or no tome. I still miss them though. I really do.

I confess to not reading Barker's tome from to cover to cover. It's the sort of book I return to on a regular basis, reading bits here and there. I'm already pretty familiar with the Brontes' lives, so the bio still makes sense this way. Barker's scholarship is excellent and her biography is extremely thorough. Recommended.

I've only had this book for an hour and I'm already on page 28! Talk about a good read. This book grabbed me from the second I started reading it. This is the best book out there for anyone who is interested in learning about the Bronte family, their books, the inspirations for those books or all 3 or even just for an interesting read. I'm just reading this book for fun. It's just like eating junk food......once I start eating a bag of cheese curls I can't put them down and I eat the whole bag! Get this book! It's better to read than to eat a whole bag of cheese curls......who needs to eat cheese curls if they get bored if they have a good book to read?! Whether for school or for fun?! Bravo!

Excelente livro

The media could not be loaded. Adorei esta biografia das irmãs Brontë. Super confortável para ler e folhear as páginas.Recomendo este livro para quem quer saber mais sobre a vida das irmãs brontë.

For anyone interested in the Bronte family for any reason, this book is a tour de force. Well written, plenty of authorial sympathy for the sad plight tin which these human beings found themselves. Should also satisfy the scholarly reader. I've read it twice so far...

Arrived early. Beautifully written book making it an interesting read, despite the sheer length and detail of the biography

Superbe livre, très détaillé et parfaitement documenté avec quelques sublimes images . Toute l histoire de la famille est répertoriée.