Selected Letters

'Dangerous as lucifer matches.'

That was how Arthur Nicholls, Charlotte Bronte's husband for the last nine months of her life, described her letters. Full of acute observations, pithy character sketches, and passionate convictions, the letters are our most direct source of information about the lives of the Brontes and our closest approach to the author of Jane Eyre. In them Charlotte writes of life at Haworth Parsonage, her experiences at a Belgian school, and her intense feelings for the Belgian schoolteacher, M. Heger. She endures the agony of the death of her siblings, and enjoys the success as a writer that brings her into contact with the London literary scene. Vivid and intimate, her letters give fresh insight into the novels, and into the development of her distinct literary style. Margaret Smith's fine edition includes invaluable notes on Bronte's correspondents, and Janet Gezari contributes a new introduction that relates the letters to both Bronte's life and her creative accomplishment.