Charlotte Bronte Biography

Charlotte Bronte was a famous English novelist and poet who left behind a rich legacy of written work which includes classical novels like ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Shirley’ and ‘Villette’. She was the eldest among the Bronte sisters—Charlotte, Emily and Anne—all of whom were writers and poets of the highest standards. A dominant and ambitious woman from a young age, she was someone who refused to blindly follow the norms the society demanded of women during her time. She was a fiercely independent woman who introduced to the literary world a new kind of heroine who defied age-old societal expectations to emerge as a courageous and virtuous individual in her own right. She grew up reading the works of the Romantic authors like Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. The three Bronte sisters supported and encouraged each other in their endeavors and shared constructive criticisms of each other’s works. As the eldest of her surviving siblings the responsibility of providing for them financially fell on Charlotte who first worked as a teacher and then as a governess to earn a living. Later on the sisters collaborated and worked together to publish their writings for financial gains. The talented sisters’ writing career was however cut short by illnesses which claimed all the three well before their time.