Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was born in Yorkshire in 1816; her father, a clergyman from a poor Irish farming family, later held the living of Haworth, a village on the moors. Her mother died when she was five, and at eight she and her sisters were sent to a harsh clergy daughters' school, where her two elder sisters fell ill and died. Thereafter Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother grew up in the parsonage on the moors, weaving together stories of imaginary kingdoms. The sisters worked as governesses, and Charlotte studied in Brussels. In 1847 the three published novels under masculine-sounding pen names, and Charlotte's Jane Eyre was an immediate success. But within little more than a year her brother, Emily and Anne all died. She married at thirty-eight and died the following year while pregnant.