Graham Watson’s debut biography, The Invention of Charlotte Bronte blows the lid off of the myths that surround Charlotte Bronte’s life still today and during her lifetime.
Published just six months ago, this debut biography has already been chosen as book of the year and best book for Christmas. I guess I can tell you that it’s also my book of the year as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Graham Watson is a specialist in the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell, and he is currently researching Victorian literary identities at the University of Glasgow. He has published a number of papers in Brontë Studies and has recently joined the journal’s peer-review board. This is his first book. Graham lives in Glasgow.
INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM WATSON
1) Have you always wanted to be a writer and published author?
Yes, always. Writing has been essential since I was a child and when I grew up that eventually turned into work: I was an editor, book reviewer and a copywriter at various times but also had to do less literary work like working in shops and offices. The road to writing and being published is rarely straight.
2) How did you come to focus on Charlotte Bronte and those specific years of her life (1850-1855)?
Charlotte Brontë’s last five years are given comparatively little space in other biographies. I’vefound once biographers have covered the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne they seem to lose interest in Charlotte on her own and gloss over everything 1850-55 to hasten towards writing about her death, despite it being the era when the lives of the Brontë family became a story that reached the outside world. My book extends beyond that era into the years immediately afterwards when Elizabeth Gaskell was researching and writing her Life of Charlotte Brontë and how the media scandal itcaused turned Charlotte into a legend.
3) Why focus specifically on Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriett Martineau and Ellen Nussey? Did your research point to them or was it something else?
My research led me in their direction. I wanted to show the living Charlotte Brontë and the mythic version, and how people who’d known her personally struggled to interact with both the living woman and her legend.Despite everyone having an opinion on her, few could agree on who she had been.
When Charlotte’s father asked Gaskell to write her lifeshe assumed he and Charlotte’s widower Arthur Bell Nicholls would be her main sources. But they refused to let her see Charlotte’s personal letters and were cagey and unreliable. Once she turned to Charlotte’s best friend, Ellen Nussey, she heard a very different take on Charlotte’s life. Harriet Martineau was a published writer who had been friends with both Charlotte and Elizabeth Gaskell but had mixed feelings about Charlotte as she’d fallen out with her by the time of her death. She became more hostile to Charlotte’s memory, thinking Charlotte had been a self-dramatizing fantasist until something was revealed to her that made her reconsider everything that she had ever thought about her.
4) As you were researching and writing this book, was there someone who stood out to you or surprised you the most and why?
What I discovered about George Smith, Charlotte’s publisher came as a surprise. I had always thought of him the way history has presented him to us, as a Prince Charming of publishing who changed Charlotte’s life and may even have had a romantic interest in her. None of that was true. I was dismayed to read the derisory comments he made about her behind her back, and once I researched his and William Thackeray’s professional relationship, I discovered George Smith had used Charlotte as the bait to sign Thackeray as the bigger client, discarding Charlotte when he felt she was no more commercial use to him. I was very pleased to find in the course of my research that Elizabeth Gaskell made it clear to him she was not as impressed by him as Charlotte had been.
5) Did Branwell Bronte come up in your research or findings at all?
He did. I’m interested in him and uncovered a lot about him that I didn’t include in The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. While my book focuses on end of Charlotte’s life, I looked at the entire lives of the Brontë family, with my fingertip research covering the 10 years on either side of 1850. To emphasise Charlotte’s isolation, I decided Branwell, Emily and Anne could not be living presences in my book – so there are no potted biographies of them or flashbacks to earlier eras – and that everything about them had to be anecdotal. Because by then they too were just stories.
6) What was your understanding of Charlotte Bronte before writing your book and how do you see her now after researching and writing about her life?
My admiration for her strength and determination increased. I knew her as the iconic figure we’re all familiar with but research brings you closer to a subject than simply reading about them. I’m in awe of her now despite being more conscious of her shortcomings and flaws.
7) What is your research process like and your writing process?
I immersed myself in the archival material and read everything I could find that related to the Brontës and everyone associated with them. I think I managed to source and read every book and article about themwritten between 1858 and 1920, as well as selected books and journal papers published since, and extended my research from letters and manuscripts to daily newspapers, weather reports and railway timetables. Not all of it, of course, made it into my book. Writing it was obsessive and once I’d reached a certain point it felt unstoppable.
U.S. edition pre-order now
8) Congratulations on the U.S. publication of The Invention of Charlotte Brontë to be published in 2025.
Thank you! I’m so excited for the book to come to the US and honoured to have it picked up by such an esteemed publishing house as Pegasus. It arrives inAugust 2025 but is already available for pre-order from Simon & Schuster.
For more information about the author in the United Kingdom , The History Press
For more information about the author’s United States publication, Simon and Schuster
To purchase a copy, Amazon UK
