Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was born in Thornton, Bradford in Yorkshire, the third of six children.
Her mother died in 1821. In 1824, she was enrolled at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. There, she and her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily, were mistreated and malnourished. They were taken out of the school the following year, but the damage had been done and Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption.
In 1829, Ms. Brontë began to write such stories as The Search After Happiness, History of the Year, and the Angrian and Glass Town sagas. The latter chronicles encompassed correspondences and writings of fictional characters in their towns and kingdoms.
Educated at Roe Head, she returned to teach there from 1835 to 1838. She subsequently spent time in Brussels, studying with her surviving sister Emily, and then teaching English.
A book of poems was published in 1846 under two pseudonyms; Ms. Brontë had contributed 19 poems to it. She had also by then written a novel, The Professor, which went unpublished; and began work on the novel Jane Eyre. Published in 1847, the latter quickly became a bestseller. Her subsequent novels included Shirley (1849, but not published until 1857) and Villette (1853).
Ms. Brontë married Arthur Nicholls in 1854; she died nine months later, and was laid to rest in the family vault at Haworth Parish Church.

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