Reef, Catherine. The Bronte Sisters.

Reef, Catherine.  The Bronte Sisters.    Houghton Mifflin/Clarion      230p $18.99 978-0-547-57966-5 2012 hs    VG -BN      Biography        

This collective biography about the Bronte family will appeal only to those students who are already obsessed with their famous novels.  Reef uses correspondence, journals, and writings of their friends and associates to describe the often dreary lives led by the three sisters and their ill-fated brother Branwell.  At times the narrative seems to drag a bit, with little glimpses into the social lives of the sisters, but that may be because Reef is careful to include every little scrap of information about their social lives in order to paint a thorough picture.

One of the major strengths of this book is its portrayal of the limited role that educated young women were able to play in the Britain of the early nineteenth century.  The only viable option open to those who were single was to serve as governesses or teachers, and these were professions that none of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Ann, enjoyed at all.  The glimmer of a new feminist consciousness and the beginnings of the progressive movement are also discussed at various points in the book.  Thus the lives and works of the three sisters are placed in the context of the social movements and intellectual concerns of the day.

Bronte sisters-Biography                                    --Carol Kennedy