The story of the tragic Brontë family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addled wastrel of a brother, wildly romantic Emily, unrequited Anne, and "poor Charlotte." Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that - imaginary - created by amateur biographers such as Mrs. Gaskell who were primarily novelists and were attracted by the tale of an apparently doomed family of genius. Juliet Barker's landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontës. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling - but true. Based on first-hand research among all the Brontë manuscripts, including contemporary historical documents never before used by Brontë biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable. The Brontës is a revolutionary picture of the world's favorite literary family.

The Brontes, living in an isolated village in Yorkshire, wrote some of the most vivid, imaginative, and widely-read novels of the Victorian Age; they also became the subject-matter of romanticized anecdotes and regrettably distorted biographies. The best testimony about what kinds of men and women they really were comes from statements they made themselves; but because their autobiographical commentaries are sparse, the record is usefully supplemented in this anthology by first-hand statements made not only by various inhabitants of Haworth, but by those who met members of the Bronte family in Yorkshire, London, and elsewhere.