The Bronte Family
Yorkshire,England was the setting for two great novels(小说) of the 19th century. These were Charlotte Bronze’s Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte’ s Withering Heights. The youngest sister, Arne,was also a gifted novelist, and books have the same extraordinary quality as her sisters’.
Their father was Patrick Bronte, born in Ireland. He moved with his wife,Maria Bronte,and their six small children to Haworth in Yorkshire in 1820. Soon after, Mrs. Bronte and the two eldest children died, leaving the father to care for the remaining three girls and a boy.
Charlotte was born in 1816. Emily was born in 1818 and Anne in 1820. Their brother Branwell was born in 1817. Left to themselves, the children wrote and told stories and walked over the hills. They grew up largely self-educated. Branwell showed a great interest in drawing. The girls were determined to earn money for his art education. They took positions as teachers or taught children in their homes.
As children they had all written many stories. Charlotte,as a young girl,alone wrote 22 books,each with 60 to 100 pages of small handwriting. Therefore, they turned to writing for income. By 1847, Charlotte had written The Professor ; Emily, Wuthering Heights and Anne, Agnes Grey. After much difficulty Anne and Emily found a publisher(出版商) , but there was no interest shown in Charlotte’s book. (It was not published until 1859.) However,one publisher expressed an interest in seeing more of her work. Jane Eyre was already started,and she hurriedly finished it. It was excepted at once; thus each of the sisters had a book published in 1847.
Jane Eyre was immediately successful:the other two, However,did not do so well. People did not like Wuthering Heights. They said it was too wild, too animal-like. But Gradually it came to be considered one of the finest novels in the English languages Emily lived only a short while after the publication of the book, and Anne died in 1849.
Charlotte published Shirley in 1849, and Villette in 1853. In 1854 she married,Arthur Bell Nicholls. But only a year later, she died of tuberculosis (肺结核) as her sisters had.