Brontë, Charlotte

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Brontë, Charlotte (1816–55) English novelist and poet. Her personal life was unhappy and she persistently suffered from ill health. Born into genteel poverty, her mother, four sisters, and dissolute brother Branwell died early. Charlotte died in childbirth within a year of her marriage. Her four novels, The Professor (1846), Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853) are works of remarkable passion and imagination. Like her sisters Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, Charlotte's writings initially appeared under a male pseudonym (Currer Bell).

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Brontë, Charlotte

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