Backstabbing, stalking, and illicit love - this is the Brontes, but not as you knew them. Novelist, sister, celebrity, wife, daughter: Charlotte Bronte played many roles. As the beloved author of Jane Eyre, she is one of the most radical talents of the nineteenth century. And one of the most mysterious. Based entirely on rarely seen private letters, this radical and moving biography sheds new light on the dramatic events of Bronte's turbulent last years of grief, fulfilment and tragedy and exposes the astonishing media scandal that followed her early death, when her friends and family battled to control how history would remember her. AUTHOR: Graham Watson is a specialist in the Brontes and Elizabeth Gaskell, and he is currently researching Victorian literary identities at the University of Glasgow. He has published a number of papers in the Bronte Studies and has recently joined the journal's peer-review board. This is his first book. 20 b/w illustrations