Bronte

Brontë 

Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (sisters), English writers. The Brontë sisters were the children of a country parson in the village of Haworth in Yorkshire. Their life was characterized by want, hard work, and paternal despotism. They held posts as schoolteachers and governesses. In 1846 the Brontë sisters published a collection of poems under the pseudonym of the “Bell Brothers,” and in 1847 their novels began to appear in print.

Charlotte Brontë. Born June 21, 1816, in Thornton; died Mar. 31, 1855, in Haworth. The most famous writer of the Brontë family. Under the pseudonym of Currer Bell she sent her first novel, The Professor, to publishers. The novel was rejected and not published until 1857. Charlotte Brontë exposed the ugliness of the bourgeois system and the status of women deprived of their rights with a directness unusual for the British Victorian novel. Her principal works were the novels Jane Eyre (vols. 1-3, 1847; Russian translation, 1849), Shirley (vols. 1-3, 1849; Russian translation, 1851), and Villette (vols. 1-3, 1853; Russian translation, 1853). K. Marx included Charlotte Brontë among the “brilliant pleiad … of English novelists” along with C. Dickens, W. Thackeray, and E. Gaskell (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 10. p. 648).

Emily Brontë. (literary pseudonym, Ellis Bell). Born Aug. 20, 1818, in Thornton; died Dec. 19, 1848, in Haworth. In her youth Emily Brontë created a cycle of romantic lyric and narrative poems about an imaginary country named Gondal, where, against a background of gloomy landscapes, stormy passions and political upheavals prevailed. Her philosophical lyrics expressed pantheistic views. In 1847 Emily Bronte’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published (Russian translation, Storm Pass, 1956).

Anne Brontë. (literary pseudonym, Acton Bell). Born Mar. 25, 1820, in Thornton; died May 25, 1849, in Scarborough. The author of poems and the novels Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

WORKS

The Novels and Poems of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, vols. 1-5. London, 1906-32.
The Brontë Letters. London-New York, 1954.
In Russian translation:
Brontë, C. Dzhen Eir. Leningrad, 1955.
Brontë, C. Sherli. Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCES

Peterson, O. Semeistvo Bronte. St. Petersburg, 1895.
Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 2, part 2. Moscow, 1955.
Anikst, A. Istoriia angliiskoi literatury. Moscow, 1956.
Elizarova, M. E. [et al.]. Istoriia zarubezhnoi literatury XIX v. Moscow, 1957.
Gaskell, E. Life of Charlotte Brontë. London, 1947.
Crampton, M. Passionate Search. London, 1955.
Hanson, L., and E. Hanson. The Four Brontës. [Hamden] 1967. (Bibliography pp. 335-47.)
Gerin, W. Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. Oxford, 1967.
Martin, R. B. The Accents of Persuasion: Charlotte Brontë’s Novels. London, 1966.
Ewbank, I. S. Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Brontë Sisters as Early-Victorian Female Novelists. London, 1966.
Spark, M., and D. Stanford. Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work. New York, 1966.
Sherry, N. Charlotte and Emily Brontë. London [1969].

Z. T. GRAZHDANSKAIA