Subtitled ‘Anne Brontë and the Art of Life’, this is very good. Effectively an impressionistic biography of the Brontë family (who all died within a few years of each other) but with particular emphasis on Anne, the least well known (or most neglected) of the three sisters.
Emily was obviously a slightly bonkers recluse, Charlotte comes out of this badly, and the author loves Anne, none of whose books I have ever read.
The author is a modern feminist and interleaves bits of her own biography with the narrative in a light and unobtrusive way. She brings out how tough it was in the rural 19th century and how hard it was for women to succeed as writers.
Anne died before she was 30, never having had a husband, lover(?) or children and rarely out of Haworth, except once to London and Scarborough, where she worked for a while and returned to die.
Very good, especially given how little knowledge or interest I had in the Brontës.
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