BRONTE MYTH, THE(ISBN=9781400078356)

　　In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism, and history, The Bronté Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronté became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputations reflected the obsessions of various eras.
　　When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had been written by young rural spinsters, the Brontés instantly became as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon after their deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into a picturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Ever since, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations of readers–Victorian, Freudian, feminist–to reinterpret them, casting them as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics. In her bewitching “metabiography,” Lucasta Miller follows the twists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront-mania and rescues these three fiercely original geniuses from the distortions of legend.

　　Lucasta Miller was educated at Oxford. She was the deputy literary editor of The Independent. Her articles and critcism have appeared in The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, and The Sunday Telegraph.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
ONE To Be for Ever Known
Two Poor Miss Bront
THREE Life into Literature
FOVR The Angel in the House
FIVE Secrets and Psychobiography
sIx Fiction and Feminism
SEVEN Interpreting Emily
EIGHT A Woman,Worthy of Being Avoided
NINE The Mystic of the Moors
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index