My Review: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life by Graham Watson

 

Charlotte Brontë had a life as seemingly dramatic as her heroine Jane Eyre. Turning her back on her tragic past, Charlotte reinvented herself as an acclaimed author, a mysterious celebrity, and a passionate lover. Doing so meant burning many bridges, but her sudden death left her friends and admirers with more questions than answers.

Tasked with telling the truth about Brontë’s life, her friend, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, uncovered secrets of illicit love, family discord, and professional rivalries more incredible than any fiction. The result, a tell-all biography, was so scandalous it was banned and rewritten twice in six months—but not before it had given birth to the legend of the Brontës.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë presents a different, darker take on one of the most famous women writers of the nineteenth century, showing Charlotte to be a strong but flawed individual. Through evaluating key events as well as introducing new archival material into the story, this lively biography challenges the established narrative to reveal the Brontë family as they’ve never been seen before.

• Publisher: Pegasus Books (August 5, 2025)
• Length: 288 pages
• ISBN13: 9781639369355

Marriage certainly makes a difference in some things and amongst others the disposition and consumption of time. I really seem to have had scarcely a spare moment... Not that I have been hurried or oppressed but the fact is my time is not my own now, somebody else wants a good portion of it and says we must do so and so. We do 'so and so' accordingly, and it generally seems the right thing-only I sometimes wish that I could have written the letter as well as taken the walk.

My life is changed indeed:  to be wanted continually, to be constantly called for and occupied seems so strange:  yet it is a marvellously good thing. As yet I don't quite understand how some wives grow so selfish. As far as my experience of matrimony goes, I think it tends to draw you out of and away from yourself. (Mrs. Nicholls aka Charlotte Bronte) 

Graham Watson focuses on the last five years (1850-1855) of the life of Charlotte Bronte who becomes Charlotte Nicholls. In this debut biography, the reader meets the friend circle of Charlotte Bronte:  Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriett Martineau, Kay Shuttleworth and Ellen Nussey. You will get to know who is a trusted friend of Charlotte Bronte and who is not. The relationship between Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell is key because of the first biography Gaskell will write and publish in 1857 two years after the death of her friend.  The reader is left to form their own opinion regarding Charlotte's individual friendship with each of them which is an aspect of the biography that I truly enjoy.  Currer Bell is brought into the frame while Charlotte Bronte is the last of her sisters to have her novels published. Aspects of Jane Eyre and Villette are discussed in various chapters. The Jane Eyre connection with a certain Mr. Thackeray shows the fangirl side of Charlotte Bronte. In 1853, Charlotte read a review of Villette posing the question, "What kind of circumstances produced women in revolt like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe?" Charlotte wrote a letter replying in explanation to answer his question. I absolutely loved the letter excerpts that author, Graham Watson uses throughout, The Invention of Charlotte Bronte: A New Life. There is nothing better than reading the words of Charlotte Bronte herself in various situations and aspects of the last years of her single and brief married life. 

It was heartbreaking yet fascinating reading about the aspects of Charlotte Bronte and Rev. Patrick Bronte's life together, just the two of them in the parsonage.  Patrick Bronte is ailing and aging while Charlotte Bronte takes care of him all the while becoming a published author and wife of the man that her father is hell bent against her marrying. I am so glad Charlotte didn't listen to her father and for a very brief few moments was truly loved as a woman and wife. 

Graham Watson has shown us Charlotte Bronte as: Friend, Author, Daughter, and Mrs. Arthur Bell Nicholls as Wife.  The Invention of Charlotte Bronte: A New Life debut biography by Graham Watson is a treasure to behold. 

To purchase the book directly from the publisher, Simon & Schuster 

To purchase from, Amazon 

Interview with Graham Watson, author of The Invention of Charlotte Bronte

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

Book Review: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her By Graham Watson

Doomed survivor of a family of geniuses, Charlotte Brontë had a life as dramatic as Jane Eyre. Turning her back on her tragic past, she reinvented herself as an acclaimed writer, a mysterious celebrity and a passionate lover. Doing so meant burning many bridges, but her sudden death left her friends and admirers with more questions than answers.

Tasked with telling the truth about Brontë’s life, her friend, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, uncovered secrets of illicit love, family discord and professional rivalries more incredible than any fiction. The result, a tell-all biography, was so scandalous it was banned and rewritten twice in six months – but not before it had given birth to the legend of the Brontës.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is a darker take on one of the most famous women writers of the nineteenth century, showing Charlotte to be a strong but flawed individual. Through interrogating known events and introducing new archival material into the story, it challenges the established narrative to reveal the Brontë family as they’ve never been seen before.

Father, I am not a young girl, not a young woman even. I never was pretty. I now am ugly. At your death I shall have £300 besides the little I have earned myself. Do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?   

Graham Watson's debut book:   Add this book to your research shelves everyone!  

Finally, readers of Charlotte Bronte now have a definitive research book covering the last years of her life (1850-1855). Graham Watson lets Charlotte Bronte's loved ones speak for themselves by including letter excerpts from Charlotte herself, her father and husband. 

As the book opens, Charlotte is the surviving Bronte sibling left to care for her aging father, Rev. Patrick Bronte. She also struggles with being known in her own lifetime as a published author of Jane Eyre and Villette. Although, there were numerous obstacles in the way of Charlotte marrying Arthur Nicholls they were put there by Charlotte and her father themselves. Luckily, in the end Charlotte would have her wedding and sadly very brief marriage as Mrs. Nicholls. 

One aspect of the book that surprised and shocked me was Charlotte's circle of female friends she kept during her lifetime. Author, Graham Watson includes three very specific women:  Ellen Nussey, Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau. Now, Ellen Nussey was Charlotte's lifelong friend from childhood, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the first controversial biographhy on Charlotte Bronte and Harriett Martineau I am not familiar with. 

You know that saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Well, unbeknownst to Charlotte, she had enemies disguised as friends who were very jealous of her since the publication of Jane Eyre. Sadly, it was Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau who were the worst 'friends' taking every opportunity they could find to badmouth Charlotte in the press. I will say Harriett was 'evil' towards Charlotte and leave it at that. Graham Watson does a wonderful job giving varied information covering the rest of the lives of these three women up until and including their deaths. There is a lot to learn about  Arthur Nicholls as well and you see a side to Rev. Patrick Bronte that I don't think is usually covered.  

Readers can purchase the book directly from, The History Press                                                                                                                                                      

A Review of Charlotte & Arthur by Pauline Clooney

 

But without our human senses to give meaning to this world and all its glories, without our emotions to take pleasure in nature, without our spirituality to give praise to the divine creator, what is it all but rock and water and air,' Arthur said.

How handsome he looked to her at that moment.  She had not expected such philosophy, if he could always surprise her in this manner, saying unexpected things, unveiling a mind, that might not be a literary one, but had the potential to match hers in depth and understanding of the human condition. A sensation coursed through her, she felt an eddy from her heart redden her cheeks and had she been more expert in these matters, she might have recognised it as the thrill of physical desire. 

In Pauline Clooney's debut novel, I feel as if I have met Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls for the first time. Arthur Bell Nicholls was a curate at the Parsonage with Reverend Bronte in Yorkshire, England. His wife, Mrs. Nicholls was the authoress of Jane Eyre,  Charlotte Bronte. He was working with her father and eventually through trial and tribulation they fell in love.  It wasn't an easy road but in June 1854 they were married at Haworth Parish Church. 

The novel, Charlotte & Arthur follow the happy couple on their honeymoon journeying from Yorkshire to Wales then throughout Ireland to meet her new in-laws, her husband's family, until returning to the  parsonage.   As the married couple traveled from place to place, it was wonderful to read the descriptions of how they were seated side by side in passenger cars looking out their window and commenting on the sights. When Charlotte grew tired, Arthur let her sleep and they were each written with a shared sense of humour that they each enjoyed. I was impressed with how the author included a few of Charlotte's letters in certain chapters as Charlotte would write to her friends sharing her experiences with 'Arthur' whom she now called instead of Mr. Nicholls and the protection she was getting used to from her husband. Gone was her preferred signature of CB replaced by Mrs. Nicholls.  I could feel her supreme happiness and am grateful she finally experienced wedded bliss. 

One of my favorite chapters and one I found most touching was chapter nine where Arthur and Charlotte both describe to each other the memory of the last time they saw or remember their mothers before both women died; Charlotte being only five years old and Arthur only being twelve years old.

Charlotte, as she spoke, was thinking of her own mother. She had so few memories to draw on being just five when she died. One, which might have been some fanciful imagining was of a young woman, a prettier version of Aunt, playing with Branwell in the parsonage parlour.  

My punishment, Charlotte, is an image that haunts me. It is of my mother sitting at a kitchen table, her fingers pressed to her eyes her mouth a grimace of pain. Arthur said, and as they both looked at each other, Charlotte felt a connection, like an invisible thread, pull her heart that bit closer to his.

We have both been very privileged to have women such as Aunt Harriette and Aunt Branwell in our lives, Arthur. Charlotte said, and as the movement of the boat increased, causing them both to sway from side to side, she wondered if it was the spirits of their mothers conjuring up the winds to rock their children one more time.  

Charlotte & Arthur is truly a beautifully written re-imagining of their very brief time together as husband and wife.  Gone is the competitive spinster Charlotte Bronte eager to be a published author living with her equally brilliant sisters and father.  Instead, a married woman emerges discovering the powerful result of the love of a good man.  

Available on kindle at  Amazon

Available direct from the publishing house in Ireland, merdog books

 

 

 

America finally meets Charlotte Brontë at The Morgan Library & Museum's Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will exhibition September 9, 2016 through January 2, 2017

Photograph taken by Kimberly Eve of Victorian Musings

Charlotte Brontë's dress and pair of shoes 

The Morgan Library & Museum

A close-up photograph of Charlotte Bronte's dress taken by Kimberly Eve/Victorian Musings

Who would have ever thought you could fill the Bronte family into one room! No, not the Parsonage but a room on the second floor of The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.   You see, this is an exhibition focused upon third born sibling Charlotte Bronte. However, father, Patrick Bronte, sisters Emily and Anne are present as well along with brother Branwell and maybe a husband, too!  Perhaps the greatest author of the nineteenth-century can be discovered, re-discovered, adored and revered right here in the city of my birth.

I am not sure if every little girl discovers Jane Eyre in their pre-teens as I did but I have carried that orphaned girl who became Mrs. Rochester with me all my life. I know her, she is real to me and always will be. I always thought I would have visited Haworth by now but alas it hasn't happened yet. I made it to the dales but that was all.  So, when news of this exhibit finally reached social media I was beyond thrilled to see it; for I thought it would be her manuscript of Jane Eyre, her letters, her drawings perhaps. This would have been enough for me until The Morgan released that photographic image of her blue dress...Absolutely impossible I thought to myself. In no way would Haworth release the Bronte family items; especially not across the pond!  I am so glad to have been wrong.  

The minute you step out of the glass elevator from the lobby to the second floor you make a sharp right turn and open the glass doors. There it is! Dead center encased in glass was the dress Charlotte Bronte 'supposedly' wore to that party when she met her literary idol, William Makepeace Thackeray.  Just cast your eyes to the left and you will see the smallest pair of flat shoes I have ever seen. Even at her 4'9 height (though I thought her height was 4'11) her shoes were indeed tiny, flattened thinned soles with laces on either side. I know because I bent down almost sitting on the floor to take the photographs in order to see both sides. They look to be fabric material on top small brown polka dots. The bottom of her shoes leather maybe or is it plastic imitation still thin with no support. How in the devil did she and her sisters walk forty miles across the moors through all sorts of rough terrain and weather?  Goodness, I get a charley-horse if I try to walk more than one mile! 

On the first wall of the exhibit was Charlotte Bronte's baptismal record. Next to it was the famous carte-des-viste of the father of the Bronte's himself. I gasped audibly not expecting to see it. Everyone recognizes this image I am sure. It is smaller than I thought but the white cropped framing makes it look larger than it is.  Interestingly, there was no drawing or image of their mother, Maria at all.  The focus remained on the Rev. Bronte as leader and guide of his daughters and son's lives most probably because he outlived them all and his letters survive. 

Carte-de-viste photograph of a woman, 

possibly Charlotte Bronte but more likely 

Ellen Nussey, ca. 1856 

The Morgan Library and Museum Catalog note

Photograph by Kimberly Eve/Victorian Musings

I was not prepared to see this photograph. I just never gave it much thought but I am so glad I have. It is one of the most curious photographs to survive within the Bronte family archive. If it is Ellen Nussey, can you believe what all the fuss is about? I hope you and Charlotte are having a good laugh over us all down here engaging in such silliness. Now when it comes to portraits there are two almost sacred ones and both of them can be found here in the exhibit. 

Branwell Bronte was about seventeen when he began this unfinished portrait, depicting his teenage sisters over a decade before they published the novels that made them famous. During the 1950s, infrared photography confirmed the presence of a fourth figure-presumably a self-portrait that Branwell had chosen to efface-beneath the central pillar. As the oil paint has faded over time, the ghostly image has become ever more apparent to the naked eye.

The painting's condition reflects its history. Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte's widower, took the work from Haworth parsonage to his new home in Banagher, Ireland, after Patrick Bronte's death. In 1914, Nicholls second wife, Mary Ann, discovered the painting on top of a wardrobe in their farmhouse, where it had apparently lain folded for over fifty years. It was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery that year and placed on display, to the public's great fascination. A century later, it is on view here for the first time in North America. (The Morgan Library & Museum Charlotte Bronte: An Independent Will exhibition catalog note)

Look!  There it is!  Oh, it is iconic isn't it?   By now, everyone knows this painting and perhaps even the story painted by their brother Branwell.  I couldn't believe I was standing in the same room with all of these treasures that I have seen photographed in every Bronte biography printed since the dawn of time.  It is a large enough portrait in size and hard to describe the feeling of being able to freely walk up to it, for it is not roped off or behind glass. You can breath on it, touch it (they hate that) or just gaze at it imploringly as I did right before I heard in my mind a whisper, "Kimberly, hurry up"  What was that? The room is filled with people walking around this room. So, I did what any rational woman does when they hear an imaginary voice, "Alright, Charlotte I'm coming! You're almost as impatient as I am". 

On the other side of the wall of the family portrait was the independent willed one herself, Charlotte Bronte captured by George Richmond in his beautiful drawing from 1850. His signature can be seen in the left hand corner. Again, it was as if the noise in the room softened, crowded voices hushed; almost stilled and all I could focus on was the fact that I was actually able to walk up to this drawing and take my time studying every detail. Of course, the folks around me hated me because I took forever but I didn't care for I had waited a lifetime for this moment. No, I'm not breaking into song but if I ever make it to Yorkshire I just might!  (Watch out Nick) 

In 1850, publisher George Smith commissioned this portrait of his celebrated author as a gift for her father, Patrick. Sitting for a professional artist was traumatic for the self-conscious Bronte, but none of her discomfort is evident in George Richmond's graceful rendering. This is the only professional portrait for which she sat during her lifetime and the only surviving life portrait except for her brother Branwell's painting of his sisters, which is on view in the rear of the gallery.

The portrait hung in the dining room of Haworth parsonage during Patrick Bronte's lifetime and an engraving of the work served as the frontispiece to the first volume of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 Life of Charlotte Bronte. It has appeared in countless studies of the Brontes since then and is on view in North America for the first time. (The Morgan Library & Museum Charlotte Bronte: An Independent Will catalog note). 

 

Charlotte Bronte letter to Ellen Nussey dated Brussels, 6 March, 1843

Bronte Parsonage Museum 

I was so happy to find that The Morgan included Charlotte's friendship with Ellen Nussey as part of the exhibit. It is so important to include not only spouses but lifelong friends of the subject as it provides a much different and needed perspective on someone who has reached an iconic status in literature and the world. 

I wrote an article about Ellen Nussey and her friendship with Charlotte Bronte. If anyone would like to learn a bit about Charlotte's dear friend Ellen Nussey 

Charlotte Bronte's younger sister, Anne Bronte was also included in this exhibit. Her notebook, her poetry was displayed and Charlotte's portrait of Anne is here as well. 

Anne's Poetry Notebook rebound later by Riviere & Son, 1838-41

Anne Bronte made neat copies of nine compositions in this notebook but eventually selected only one for inclusion in the 1846 volume of poems she published with her sisters. Her narrative poem, "The Parting" shown here, bears no resemblance to Charlotte's sentimental poem of (almost) the same title. (The Morgan Library & Museum)

Charlotte Bronte's portrait of her sister, Anne Bronte

17 June 1834, Watercolor drawing,

Bronte Parsonage Museum

There were so many treasured personal items belonging to Charlotte and her siblings that I couldn't possibly share them all. These are just some of the special ones that touched my heart that I have been longing to cast my eyes upon. I am so grateful to Bronte Parsonage Museum for loaning their belongings to The Morgan for lucky ones such as I.  One day I will walk through the doors of the parsonage, hopefully accompanied by a friend (you know who you are) and I will see much more!!  

Discover Charlotte Bronte: An Independent Will for yourself,  The Morgan Library & Museum

Upcoming U.S. Exhibition: Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will (September 9, 2016, through January 2, 2017)

Engraved portrait of Charlotte Brontë by James Charles Armytage, after a chalk drawing by George Richmond, 1857. 

The Morgan Library & Museum.

The very first Brontë novel I read was 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte. I was about twelve years old in grammar school searching the library room shelves when I saw a Gothic looking cover of a woman with raven hair pulled back in a bun with a black cloak tied over her shoulders covering a long white dress.  Smiling and intrigued, I reached for the small, worn, paperback.  I took it out and brought it home where I sat on my bed reading every day and night before and after school until I finished it. My mom was thrilled. To say she was a voracious reader would be an understatement. I overheard  a conversation once between herself and my grandma where my mom said something to the effect of, "I wonder when Kimberly will read books on her own without it being a school assignment?" 

Well, actually 'Jamaica Inn' by Daphne du Maurier was my first book I read on my own at the age of ten years old but Jane Eyre was the second!  

So, my Brontë passion began with Charlotte, progressed to Emily Bronte's, 'Wuthering Heights' which my mom adored. She took me to the movie theatre to watch the film version with Laurence Olivier every single time it hit the theatres!  It was fantastic; just sitting there next to my mom, during my teen years, watching her face light up as 'Larry' walked across the screen.  I get it now Mom. I get it! 

Anyway, I didn't get to Anne Bronte's novels until I was an adult. How moving they both were for me. 

The first time I went to the United Kingdom, it was July 1997 during the World Cup but that's a different story. Although, it introduced me to something called football and the team, 'Manchester United'.  I still love them!  My first trip included the Yorkshire Dales but not Haworth Parsonage Museum. I swore one day, I would return and trace the steps of each Bronte sister. I wanted to walk the moors and attempt to feel what they had.  I have not made it to Haworth yet but this coming September 2016 some of Charlotte Bronte's most treasured items will travel to New York City's Morgan Library and Museum.  

"From the time Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre was first published in 1847, readers have been drawn to the orphan protagonist who declared herself “a free human being with an independent will.” Like her most famous fictional creation, Brontë herself took bold steps throughout her life in pursuit of personal and professional fulfillment. This exhibition, presented on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of Brontë’s birth, traces her creative path from reluctant governess to published poet to commanding novelist. From her earliest literary works—written with a quill pen in a minuscule hand designed to mimic the printed page—to the manuscript of her explosive novel Jane Eyre, the exhibition presents an intimate portrait of one of England’s most compelling authors.

The exhibition is a historic collaboration between two of the world’s finest repositories of Brontëana. It brings together literary manuscripts, intimate letters, and rare printed books from the Morgan’s rich collection with personal artifacts, drawings, and photographs from the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England. Highlights include Brontë’s earliest surviving miniature manuscript, her portable writing desk and paint box, one of her own dresses, and a pair of her ankle boots. Also on view—for the first time in North America—will be a portion of the manuscript of Jane Eyre, from the collection of the British Library, open to the unforgettable scene in which Jane tells Rochester, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”

Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will is made possible by Fay and Geoffrey Elliott.
The catalogue is underwritten by the Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Research and Publications.

For further details, The Morgan Library

A birthday between friends: Ellen Nussey (20 April 1817–26 November 1897) and Charlotte Bronte (21 April 1816–31 March 1855)

 “Friendship, however, is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day. When first I saw Ellen I did not care for her; we were school fellows. In course of time we learned each other’s faults and good points. We were contrasts still we suited. Affection was first a germ, then a sapling, then a strong tree. Now, no new friend, however lofty or profound in intellect not even Miss Martineau herself could be to me what Ellen is: yet she is no more than a conscientious, observant, calm, well-bred Yorkshire girl. She is without romance.” Charlotte Bronte describing her friendship with Ellen Nussey in a letter to Mr. Williams dated January 3, 1850.

 

Portrait of a young woman looking over her right shoulder towards the viewer: head held high; broad, open features, large almond-shaped brown eyes, high arched eyebrows, long nose, full highly colored pink cheeks and lips: glossy brown shoulder-length ringlets cover her head, part of a bow visible at back right; bare shoulders with a ribbon around neck. It is said to be a portrait of Ellen Nussey by Charlotte Bronte. This drawing was found amongst Ellen Nussey’s effects between May 18-19, 1898. It is now housed at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Does anyone else see that Ellen Nussey and Charlotte Bronte were born one day and one year apart? How have I never come to realize that fact before? On April 21, 1816 Maria Bronte nee Branwell gave birth to Charlotte  Bronte in Thornton in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Twelve months later, on 20 April, 1817 Ellen Nussey nee Wade (1771-1857)  gave birth to Ellen Nussey also in West Riding of Yorkshire, England in a small house on Smithies Moore Lane.The youngest of twelve siblings, her father John Nussey (1760-1826) was a cloth merchant of Birstall Smithies. Upon his death in 1826, their mother Ellen Wade Nussey moved her twelve children into their Grand Uncle Richard Walker's home called  Rydings. Years later, Ellen Nussey's old friend Charlotte Bronte would name a grand house Thornfield in Jane Eyre. Rydings is believed to be used as the model for it. 

 Young woman at table by Charlotte Bronte, 1838

owned by Ellen Nussey

Bronte Parsonage Museum

 

Ellen Nussey’s education was varied. For instance, at a young age she first attended a small local school before entering into Gomersal Moravian Ladies’ Academy. Finally, on 25 January 1831 Ellen Nussey walked into  Margaret Wooler’s school at Roe Head. It was here a fourteen year old Ellen met fifteen year old Charlotte Bronte. In 1836, Ellen Wade moved her family to Brookroyd in Birstall into a much smaller house than Rydings.  So begins the lifelong friendship between two young girls from Yorkshire England.

Charlotte Bronte by George Richmond

Ellen Nussey would visit Charlotte at Haworth often eventually becoming fast friends with her sisters Emily and Anne. She even earned the approval of their father, Rev. Patrick Bronte. Ellen was always present or nearby during all of the Bronte sisters life events good and bad. She would be a good friend to the three sisters but there was that bond between she and Charlotte, especially. Their friendship even survived Charlotte's rejection of a marriage proposal from Ellen brother's Henry. Now, that's true friendship. Come on girls didn't you fight sometimes? Go days or months without speaking because of a huge row?

Well apparently their friendship survived all three sisters novel publications and lives as authors. It wasn't until the engagement of Charlotte Bronte to her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls late in life that Ellen Nussey became jealous. She didn't communicate with Charlotte for a while. It couldn't have been very long because Ellen was one of two witnesses when Charlotte married Nicholls at Haworth in June of 1854. She was also Charlotte's only bridesmaid, so I guess they made up!  When Charlotte died in March 1855, Ellen dedicated herself to preserving her friend's memory.

Charlotte Bronte's life was filled with family, hearth and home. She worked for a year teaching at her old school Roe Head. She left because she was unhappy and unfulfilled. She was also a governess briefly. Her time in Brussels as a student ended up in heartbreak for her while her sister Emily thrived. She never stayed at one place for very long. Her one constant was her writing, sitting at the rounded table in that tiny room at Haworth. Through every upheaval and happy event she used her feelings, experiences and people she met in her novels: 

Jane Eyre 1847, Shirley 1849, Villette 1853, and The Professor 1857.

 I can understand Charlotte's restlessness, yearning for adventure while still keeping people at bay; only cherishing those she knows and loves. I am much like that myself.  One gets bored easily and seeks out fun and happy times but then has numerous interests it is easy to get overwhelmed by situations and people around you. Charlotte wanted romance but wouldn't admit it. She had three proposals during her lifetime. Marrying quite late in life to a man her father did not care for and a proposal she initially rejected. Lucky for her,  Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls persisted. Briefly, Charlotte became Mrs. Nicholls and their time together was her happiest. Sadly, pregnancy did not work out for her and it aided in her death in 1855.  

 Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1861

Charlotte Bronte left her legacy as did her sisters and brother. On the other side you have spinster Ellen Nussey who came from the same place, same time, a large enough family with demons of its own. Although, there is not much detail about her life aside from her well known friend Charlotte. She is the keeper of the flame as it were. She preserved her correspondence with Charlotte Bronte which thankfully provides a quite wonderful understanding of who Charlotte was as a friend. Through the Bronte family documentation we know who she was as sister, teacher, governess but only Ellen Nussey let us into her personal world so we could meet her friend of twenty four years (1831-1855).

 “The life of Charlotte Bronte, viewed apart from her high gifts and genius as an authoress, was a very unsensational life; for the most part it was a life of domestic duty, self-sacrifice, fidelity to whatever she believed to be right, fortitude in suffering, and patient resignation under all inevitable trials. What is said of Charlotte may, with almost equal truth, be said of Emily and Anne; thugh they differed greatly in many points of character and disposition, they were each and all on common ground if a principle had to be maintained or a sham to be detected. They were all jealous of anything hollow or unreal. All were resolutely single-minded, eminently courageous, eminently simple in their habits, and eminently tender-hearted. 

I could no longer refuse or delay to set about giving, as a tribute of justice to herself, a few more of her own words, the words of her heart and feelings, as they were elicited by the common accidents and incidents of daily life. The doing of this involves some sacrifice; but to shrink from possible annoyance or discomfort when duly called upon in defence of one we have loved, is indeed to be cowardly and craven-hearted, and unworthy of Charlotte Brontes faithful love and friendship.”  Ellen Nussey describing her friend Charlotte Bronte (and her sisters) in Scribner’s Monthly, May 1871.

  

Is that all Ellen Nussey has given us? I just find it a bit sad that although she lived to the age of eighty years old, what do we know about this woman? If it were not for meeting Charlotte at school and the Bronte family connection who would Ellen Nussey be? We would never have heard of her. How do you live such a long life and have not that much to show for it. Maybe she was content and think me foolish for such thoughts but she didn't marry? Was she proposed to? Did it matter to her?

 Ellen Nussey in old age 1895

On the morning of Friday, November 26, 1897 Miss Ellen Nussey passed away in her Yorshire home. She was the life-long friend of Charlotte Bronte, and the chief, if not sole, personal link existing in connection with that gifted family. Lady Morrison and Ellen Nussey were close friends for more than ten years, 

“In person Ellen Nussey was not striking, but she was sprightly, attractive coquettish, no doubt, in her younger days and intelligent; her manners charming; every word and gesture bearing emphatically the stamp of truth; while her voice, mellowed and modulated to a peculiarly gentle cadence, was exceedingly pleasant to hear. I have often sat beside her, and heard with unfeigned interest her sparkling talk about the Bronte family; have heard her relate incidents and anecdotes in the lives of the sisters, which seemed to me better than any information to be gathered from books. Miss Nussey told me that she considered Branwell, the brother, the cleverest, and most talented of the whole family, and, but for his misused powers, he could, had he chosen, have outstripped his sisters in literature. Many of the incidents which she related go far to prove that Charlotte Bronte was keenly alive to humor, her life, she was at all times open to, and rejoiced in, its gaiety and sunshine. That Ellen Nussey is the prototype of ‘Caroline Helstone’ in Shirley cannot for a moment be doubted. It may be remembered that in one part of the book Caroline was described as wearing a brown dress with a pink bow. When I inquired of Miss Nussey if this also was taken from herself, she said that she was wearing that particular kind of attire at the time Shirley was written. It is to Ellen Nussey that the public is, and will ever be, indebted for authentic information with regard to the Bronte family. But for her, no history of these remarkable people could have gone forth to the world in a truthful and reliable form.”  The Bookman, Volume VI, September, 1897-February, 1898