Includes bibliographical references (p. 517-526) and index.

Origins -- Early youth : Haworth and Cowan Bridge -- That visionary region of imagination -- The Misses Wooler's school at Roe Head -- Minds out of the same mould -- My dreams, the gods of my religion -- The slave of feeling -- Governessing -- The pensionnat heger -- The black swan -- A too still existence -- Literary exertion -- Writing Jane Eyre -- 'Conventionality is not morality' -- Dark shadows -- Shirley -- The she-artist -- New friendships -- Villette -- The eye of a rebel -- Marriage -- The final months -- Epilogue.

This volume is a portrait of the Bront�e sisters and their family. The English sisters are well known as poets and novelists. Charlotte Bront�e (1816-1855), known for her novel Jane Eyre; Emily Bront�e (1818-1848), famous for Wuthering Heights; and Anne Bront�e (1820-1849), the author of Tenant of Wildfell Hall, were very close and during their childhood developed their imaginations through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories. Writing from a contemporary perspective and drawing on previously unknown documents, this book allows readers to see Charlotte Bront�e and her sisters as their contemporaries saw them, as passionately outspoken women who dared to claim for their sex an equal right to the passions and desires of men. The author makes many suggestions as to the origins of characters, plots, and locations which all the sisters used in their writing.