A triumph—it’s hard to imagine anyone else ever again getting quite this close to the Brontës.
A massive, almost certainly definitive biography that both demystifies and restores one of England’s most legendary literary families.
In this updated, entirely revised version of her 1994 biography, Barker (Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417-1450, 2012, etc.) completely submerges herself in the world of her subjects, delivering a rich, illuminating group portrait of the real and imaginative lives of a family of writers: the father, Patrick Brontë, a Church of England parson, and his children: Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their legendary if lesser-known brother Branwell, a poet and painter. (Two other children died young.) Barker knows the Brontës and their 19th-century world on an intimate basis, almost as if she breathes the clammy air of the Haworth parsonage where they lived. She knows what they read and how they imagined. Barker pays especially close attention to the contemporary journalism, which had a demonstrable impact on the Brontës' own fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal. The Brontës would, in turn, become myths themselves. Indeed, part of Barker’s ambition is to save the family from its legend. Her particular nemesis is the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, whose 1857 classic The Life of Charlotte Brontë, writes Barker, whitewashed Charlotte’s life, ignored or misread the lives of her siblings and depicted Patrick as a cranky, eccentric tyrant. Barker sees Charlotte as a selfish, manipulative literary genius; Patrick, the book’s major figure, is convincingly rendered as a dominant but loving father and a pioneer of liberal reform. While not a critical biography, Barker doggedly traces the inspiration of all the novels and, especially in Charlotte's case, astutely matches fiction to fact.
A triumph—it’s hard to imagine anyone else ever again getting quite this close to the Brontës.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60598-365-3
Page Count: 1184
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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