Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte face a bleak future, with their father half-blind, and troubled brother Branwell in decline. As their situation worsens, Charlotte sees that writing could offer a way out. This is the story of the sisters' great novels and their extraordinary battle for recognition.

"Inside a small Yorkshire parsonage, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë have invented a game called Glass Town, where their toy soldiers fight Napoleon and no one dies. This make-believe land helps the four escape from a harsh reality: Charlotte and Emily are being sent away to a dangerous boarding school, a school they might not return from. But on this Beastliest Day, the day Anne and Branwell walk their sisters to the train station, something...

A beautifully imagined tale of the Brontë sisters, "Becoming Jane Eyre" delicately unravels the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her.

"In the English countryside of the nineteenth century, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë--coping with an elderly father and a brother dedicated to drinking--find themselves confronting their family's stormy economic fortunes. And they do it their own way: overcoming difficulties and first failures with pride and courage; transforming their creative talents into a source of sustenance; and finally living lives of freedom."--

A full account of the lives and careers of the Brontë̈ sisters and their troubled but gifted brother, showing how their writings helped to sustain them during their sufferings and sorrows.

"The tragic story of the Bronte family is well known, replete with a half-mad father, a wastrel of a brother, and three uniquely gifted - and oppressed - sisters. But beyond these familiar details, the Brontes' story has remained largely obscure. This landmark book is the first definitive history of this fascinating family. Based on eleven years of research among newly discovered letters by every member of the family, original manuscripts, and the...