Clement K. Shorter

Reproduction of the original: Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle by Clement K. Shorter

"Charlotte Bront and Her Circle" is a 1896 treatise on the Bront sisters by Clement King Shorter. Dealing with every aspect of their lives, loves, losses, and literary endeavours, it offers the reader a unique and profound insight into this famous literary family. This volume is not to be missed by those with an interest in English literature and the Bront sisters in particular. Contents include: "A Bront Chronology," "Preliminary: Mrs. Gaskell," "Patrick Bront And Maria His Wife," "Childhood, School And Governess Life," "The Pensionnat H ger, Brussels," "Patrick Branwell Bront ," "Emily Jane Bront ," "Anne Bront ," "Ellen Nussey," "Mary Taylor," "Margaret Woole," etc. Clement King Shorter (1857 - 1926) was a British literary critic and journalist. Other notable works by this author include: "Immortal Memories" (1907), "The Bront s: Life and Letters" (1908), and "George Borrow and his Circle" (1913). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition for the enjoyment of readers now and for years to come.

Asked by a kindly publisher to add one more to the Jubilee volumes which commemorate the sixtieth year of the Queen's reign, I am pleased at the opportunity thus afforded me of gathering up a few impressions of pleasant reading hours. "Every age," says Emerson, "must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this." It is true, of course, and as a result the popular favourite of to-day is well-nigh forgotten to-morrow. In reading the critical journals of thirty years ago it is made quite clear that they contain few judgments which would be sustained by a consensus of critical opinion to-day. Whether time will deal as hardly with the critical judgments of to-day we may not live to see. I have no ambition to put this book to a personal test. So far as it has any worth at all it is meant to be bibliographical and not critical. It aspires to furnish the young student, in handy form, with as large a number of facts about books as can be concentrated in so small a volume. That this has been done under the guise of a consecutive narrative, and not in the form of a dictionary, is merely for the convenience of the writer. I have endeavoured to say as little as possible about living poets and novelists. With the historians and critics the matter is of less importance. To say that Mr Samuel Rawson Gardiner has written a useful history, or that Professor David Masson's "Life of Milton" is a valuable contribution to biographical literature, will excite no antagonism. But to attempt to assign Mr W. B. Yeats a place among the poets, or "Mark Rutherford" a position among the prose writers of the day, is to trespass upon ground which it is wiser to leave to the critics who write in the literary journals from week to week. It was not possible to ignore all living writers. I have ignored as many as I dared.