Lucasta Miller

An original combination of biography, literary criticism and history, The Brontë Myth shows how the Brontë sisters became cultural icons. Since 1857, when Elizabeth Gaskell published her famous Life of Charlotte Brontë, the story of literature's most famous family has been endlessly reinterpreted, not just by biographers, but by film-makers and playwrights, choreographers and cartoonists, poets and artists.

Lucasta Miller follows the fortunes of the Brontës' afterlife and explores how each retelling - whether in pious Victorian conduct books or in Freudian psycho-biographies, in feminist manifestos or on tea-towels made for the tourist market - reflects the preoccupations of its own age.

Acknowledged as a 'landmark book' and a 'seminal' classic of modern life-writing, The Brontë Myth gives new energy to our understanding of the novelists and their culture, while revealing as much about the impossible art of biography as it does about Charlotte, Emily and Anne themselves.

Reviews

‘A brilliant, wide-ranging study ... meticulously researched, written with wit and relish, and packed with irresistible detail’
—Times

‘Absorbing ... Miller writes with such lucidity, wit and plain common sense that she is able to shed new light on the Brontës ... An erudite and clear-headed book’, —New York Times

‘A brilliant excavation of the way in which our ideas about the Brontë sisters have shape-shifted down the years ... Scholarly, fluent and funny ... The Brontë Myth is essential reading’
—Sunday Telegraph

‘Brilliant and riveting ... Miller's unputdownable and erudite book has not only left us with a clearer picture and greater understanding of the Brontës and the nature of biography, but tells us a lot about ourselves’
—Daily Mail

‘... juicy ... Miller ticks off [the] dizzying shifts in the Brontë zeitgeist with great erudition and wit ... Miller's own scholarship is formidable, her voice informal and fresh’
—Washington Post

‘A witty deconstruction of Brontëmania ... done with a deft, light touch’
—The Guardian

‘Seminal’
—Times Literary Supplement

‘Miller unravels the Brontë myth with tenacity, detail and grace - from souvenir tea towels and Haworth Parsonage mugs to Hollywood visions of wind-swept moors. In the process, she restores life to Emily and Anne, and especially to Charlotte’
—Christian Science Monitor

‘Refreshing and brilliantly thought-provoking’
—Richard Holmes, Books of the Year, Telegraph