Born to a prosperous tea merchant and grocer, Maria Branwell was raised in Penzance, Cornwall, married Patrick Brontë in 1812, bore six children in seven years-Maria (1813), Elizabeth (1815), Charlotte (1816), Patrick Branwell (1817), Emily (1818), and Anne (1820)-and died of cancer at the age of 38. His rise from modest beginnings can be attributed largely to his considerable talent, hard work, and steady ambition-qualities his daughter Charlotte clearly inherited.Ĭharlotte’s mother, Maria Branwell Brontë, died when her daughter was only five years old. In addition to writing the sermons he regularly delivered, Patrick Brontë was also a minor poet, publishing his first book of verse, Cottage Poems, in 1811. He graduated in 1806 and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1807. As the eldest son in a large family, Patrick normally would have found his life’s work in managing the farm he was to inherit instead, he first became a school teacher and a tutor and, having attracted the attention of a local patron, acquired training in the classics and was admitted to St. Her father, Patrick Brontë, was the son of a respectable Irish farmer in County Down, Ireland. Her experience as a poet thus reflects the dominant trends in early Victorian literary culture and demonstrates her centrality to the history of 19th-century literature.īrontë was born on Apin the village of Thornton, West Riding, Yorkshire. Brontë’s decision to abandon poetry for novel writing exemplifies the dramatic shift in literary tastes and the marketability of literary genres-from poetry to prose fiction-that occurred in the 1830s and 1840s.

Included in this novel are the two songs by which most people know her poetry today.

Like her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Brontë experimented with the poetic forms that became the characteristic modes of the Victorian period-the long narrative poem and the dramatic monologue-but unlike Browning, Brontë gave up writing poetry after the success of Jane Eyre. One of the most famous Victorian women writers, and a prolific poet, Charlotte Brontë is best known for her novels, including Jane Eyre (1847), her most popular.

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë