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
The world didn't lose a great journalist when Gloria Steinem focused her energies on feminist activism—but because she was a working journalist (and, from 1968, political columnist for first-person-prone New York magazine), the light bulb goes on right here. This first collection of her writings (also, her first book) leads off with autobiographical comments: on the speaking she's done instead of writing, and how difficult ("a major hurdle in my life") and ultimately rewarding it was (kudos on both scores to her black lecture partners); on her earlier writing career, or the frustrations of frivolous, "girl reporter" assignments; on her first stabs at "telling the truth in public" and other outcomes of a "growing consciousness." From the pre-feminist writing, she includes only "I Was a Playboy Bunny"—a 1963 "exposÉ" of the crippling grind, the miserable pay, the sexual harassment (said a co-worker: "If you can type, what the hell do you want to be a Bunny for?")—and the first parts of a section of campaign reports, 1965-72. It's there, in 1968, that the "Feminist Realization" (born of covering women's meetings) hits home—eliciting the kind of protest that would quickly become a groundswell: "Six months ago I would have been honored by McGovern's invitation to a 'serious' (i.e., male and therefore grownup) political meeting, but full of doubt about whether I could contribute in a 'serious' (male) way. . . . I couldn't admit that any power relationship in life is political: therefore politics for women may be who's doing the dishes, or who's getting paid half the wages that a man would get for the same job, or who's expected to take the roles of service and support everywhere, including in political campaigns." A dozen pages later, after the 1972 Democratic Convention (Chisholm for president, Farenthold for V.P.): "Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers, or mindless policy-makers. . . ." That sense of being in at the creation is diluted by the non-chronological arrangement of the pieces in the remaining two-thirds of the book—pieces that are essentially feminist polemics whether the subject is food (women's smaller share or "Erotica vs. Pornography," (good) Jackie Kennedy or the (bad) heroine of Sophie's Choice. A partial exception is "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)," Steinem's previously unpublished memoir of her mentally-disturbed mother—whom she regards as a victim but also celebrates as a life-force. Still, her particular talent has been for perceiving the feminist angle, in her own writing and for Ms., and spreading that recognition. If some of the ideas here sound hackneyed, she has honest claim to them.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0452257107
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
IN THE NEWS
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
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