You may remember that I read the book about Emily Bronte in this series back in January, and I mentioned then that I had used a voucher to buy the books about Charlotte and Anne. They have been by the side of my bed ever since then but in mid October just after my holiday I picked up the one about Charlotte and read it quite quickly. I liked it a lot but I'm not sure if it told me much new information about Charlotte. As I said in my review of the book about Emily, I do know a bit about the Brontes already.
However, there was some new information that I did like - such as Charlotte's politics. She was a Tory and believed passionately in a lot of things, informed by the papers that her father read daily in the parsonage. Jane Eyre is often said to be a proto-feminist book but this book makes the argument that it isn't really, because of Charlotte's politics. I found that really interesting.
I also liked the part about Charlotte's looks and how she wasn't particularly pretty, and how even the picture on the front of the book has been colourised and 'prettified' and isn't thought to particularly resemble Charlotte. I thought this was interesting, especially given how she has been portrayed in films and TV for example. This book also mentions Branwell much less, which I'm glad about, but it did look in some depth at the years after he, Emily, and Anne all died, and what Charlotte did then.
This is definitely a book for fans of the Brontes, but I think it's good and I'm looking forward to reading the one about Anne, too. I'm giving this four out of five.
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