Elizabeth Gaskell

Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, written at the request of Charlotte's father and published in 1857, two years after her death, created the image of the Brontës that still dominates: three gifted sisters isolated on the moors at Haworth, writing against grief and hardship. She drew on Charlotte's letters to her friend Ellen Nussey and on her own friendship with Charlotte. It is moving and partisan, and threats of libel forced cuts to the third edition. Read it as the founding myth, then compare it with Juliet Barker's corrective The Brontës.