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Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Born	c.1659–1661
Died	24 April 1731
Occupation	Writer, Journalist, Merchant
Genres	Adventure
Influenced Johann Wyss, Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf

Daniel Defoe ( /ˌdænjəl dɨˈfoʊ/; ca. 1659–1661 to 24 April 1731),^[1] born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson, is among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.^[2]

Early life[link]

Daniel Foe (his original name) was probably born in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate London. Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. The date and the place of his birth are uncertain, with sources often giving dates of 1659 to 1661. His father James Foe, though a member of the Butchers' Company, was a tallow chandler. In Defoe's early life he experienced first-hand some of the most unusual occurrences in English history: in 1665, 70,000 were killed by the Great Plague of London. The Great Fire of London (1666) hit Defoe's neighbourhood hard, leaving only his and two other homes standing.^[3] In 1667, when Defoe was probably about seven years old, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and attacked Chatham. By the time he was about 10, Defoe's mother Annie had died.^[4][5]

His parents were Presbyterian dissenters; he was educated in a dissenting academy at Newington Green run by Charles Morton and is believed to have attended the church there.^[6] During this time period, England was not tolerant in religion. Controversy of religion was a political issue. Roman Catholics were feared and hated. Dissenters refused to conform to the services of the Church of England; they were despised and oppressed.

James Foe wanted his son to enter in ministry, but Daniel Defoe preferred other things. When he was about 18, he left school. After some years of preparations, he went into the hosiery business.

Business career[link]

Although Defoe was a Christian, he decided not to become a dissenting minister and entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woollen goods and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship (as well as civet cats to make perfume), he was rarely out of debt. In 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant, and received a dowry of £3,700. With his debts and political trouble, their marriage was most likely a difficult one. It lasted 50 years, however, and together they had eight children, six of whom survived.^[4]

In 1685, he joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion but gained a pardon by which he escaped the Bloody Assizes of Judge George Jeffreys. William III was crowned in 1688, and Foe immediately became one of his close allies and a secret agent.^[4] Some of the new king's policies, however, led to conflict with France, thus damaging prosperous trade relationships for Defoe, who had established himself as a merchant.^[4] In 1692, Defoe was arrested for payments of £700 (and his civets were seized), though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000 His laments were loud and he always defended unfortunate debtors but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest.

Following his release, he probably travelled in Europe and Scotland^{[citation needed]} and it may have been at this time that he traded wine to Cadiz, Porto and Lisbon. By 1695 he was back in England, using the name "Defoe", and serving as a "commissioner of the glass duty", responsible for collecting the tax on bottles. In 1696 he was operating a tile and brick factory in what is now Tilbury, Essex and living in the parish of Chadwell St Mary.

Writing[link]

Pamphleteering and prison[link]

Daniel Defoe in the pillory, 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe

Defoe's first notable publication was An Essay upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698 he defended the right of King William III to a standing army during disarmament after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years' War (1688–97). His most successful poem, The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity. In 1701 Defoe, flanked by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of quality, presented the Legion's Memorial to the Speaker of the House of Commons, later his employer, Robert Harley. It demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France.

The death of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval as the king was replaced by Queen Anne, who immediately began her offensive against Nonconformists.^[4] A natural target, Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church,^[7] purporting to argue for their extermination. In it he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called "occasional conformity", such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney. Though it was published anonymously, the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested.^[4] He was charged with seditious libel. After a trial at the Old Bailey in front of the notoriously sadistic judge Salathiel Lovell, Defoe was found guilty.^[2] Lovell sentenced him to a punitive fine, to public humiliation in a pillory, and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would only end upon the discharge of the punitive fine.^[2] According to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health. The historicity of this story is questioned by most scholars, although John Robert Moore later said that "no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men".^[5] (Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald and famous Royal Navy officer, was sentenced to the pillory but was excused for fear his popularity would cause a riot.)

After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went into Newgate Prison. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent for the Tories. In exchange for his cooperation with the rival political side, Harley paid some of Defoe's outstanding debts, improving his financial situation considerably.^[4] Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703 which raged from 26 to 27 November. It caused severe damage to London and Bristol and uprooted millions of trees and killed over 8,000 people, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe's The Storm (1704), a collection of witness accounts of the tempest.^[8] Many regard it as one of the world's first examples of modern journalism.^[9] In the same year he set up his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France which supported the Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714). The Review ran three times a week without interruption until 1713. Defoe was amazed that a man as gifted as Harley left vital state papers lying in the open, and warned that he was almost inviting an unscrupulous clerk to commit treason; his warnings were fully justified by the William Gregg affair. When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708 Defoe continued writing it to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710 to 1714. After the Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government, writing "Tory" pamphlets that actually undermined the Tory point of view.^[4]

Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet (originally published anonymously) entitled A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September, 1705, deals with interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. It was most likely written in support of Charles Drelincourt's The Christian Defense against the Fears of Death (1651). It describes Mrs. Bargrave's encounter with an old friend Mrs. Veal, after she had died. It is clear from this piece and other writings, that while the political portion of Defoe's life was fairly dominant, it was by no means the only aspect.

Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707[link]

No fewer than 545 titles, ranging from satirical poems, political and religious pamphlets and volumes have been ascribed to Defoe (note: in their Critical Bibliography (1998), Furbank and Owens argue for the much smaller number of 276 published items). His ambitious business ventures saw him bankrupt by 1692, with a wife and seven children to support. In 1703, he published a satirical pamphlet against the High Tories and in favour of religious tolerance entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. As has happened with ironic writings before and since, this pamphlet was widely misunderstood but eventually its author was prosecuted for seditious libel and was sentenced to be pilloried, fined 200 marks and detained at the Queen's pleasure.

Title page from Daniel Defoe's: The History Of The Union Of Great Britain dated 1709 and printed in Edinburgh by the Heirs of Anderson

In despair, he wrote to William Paterson the London Scot and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darien scheme, who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster in the English Government. Harley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.

In 1709 Defoe authored a rather lengthy book entitled, The History Of The Union Of Great Britain; an Edinburgh publication printed by the Heirs of Anderson.^[10]

The book was not authored anonymously and cites Defoe as twice^[11][12] taking credit for being its author. An evolution expounded in the book which attempts to explain the facts leading up to the Act of Union 1707 dates all the way back to the 6 December 1604^[13] when King James was presented with a proposed embellishment for unification. This so-called "first draft" for unification took place a full one-hundred years before the signing of the 1707 accord, which respectively preceded the commencement of Robinson Crusoe' by another full ten years.

Defoe began his campaign in The Review and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an "inexhaustible treasury of men", a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706 Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty of Union. He was conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such as The Letters of Daniel Defoe (edited by G. H. Healey, Oxford 1955), which are readily available, far more is known about his activities than is usual with such agents.

His first reports included vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind", he reported. Years later John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that,

He was a spy among us, but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him to pieces.

Defoe being a Presbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was "privy to all their folly" but "Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England". He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported back:

Having had the honour to be always sent for the committee to whom these amendments were referrèd,
I have had the good fortune to break their measures in two particulars via the bounty on Corn and
proportion of the Excise.

For Scotland he used different arguments, even the opposite of those he used in England, for example, usually ignoring the English doctrine of the Sovereignty of Parliament, telling the Scots that they could have complete confidence in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union but always having the last word for himself.

He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun by ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of the Duke of Hamilton, the official leader of the various factions opposed to the Union, who seemingly betrayed his former colleagues when he switched to the Unionist/Government side in the decisive final stages of the debate.

Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehement for its independence from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and of course no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union, was "not the case, but rather the contrary".

Defoe's description of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a "Dear Green Place" has often been misquoted as a Gaelic translation for the town. The Gaelic Glas could mean grey or green, chu means dog or hollow. Glaschu probably actually means "Green Hollow". The "Dear Green Place", like much of Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the Union. The local Tron minister urged his congregation "to up and anent for the City of God". The "Dear Green Place" and "City of God" required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty, as at almost every mercat cross in Scotland.

When Defoe visited in the mid 1720s, he claimed that the hostility towards his party was, "because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against".

Late writing and novels[link]

The extent and particulars of Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 is widely contested. Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute tracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologia Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–14). Other works that are thought to anticipate his novelistic career include: The Family Instructor (1715), an immensely successful conduct manual on religious duty; Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717), in which he impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (1718), a satire on European politics and religion, professedly written by a Muslim in Paris.

Memorial to "Daniel De-Foe", Bunhill Fields, City Road, London.

From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he is famous (see below). In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conduct manuals, including Religious Courtship (1722), The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and The New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such as The Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) and Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725) and works on the supernatural, like The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magick (1726) and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). His works on foreign travel and trade include A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) and Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis (1728). Perhaps his greatest achievement with the novels is the magisterial A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724–27), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

Novels[link]

His novels include:

• Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe: with his Vision of the angelick world (1720)
• Captain Singleton (1720)
• A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
• Colonel Jack (1722)
• Moll Flanders (1722)
• Roxana (1724)
• Memoirs of a Cavalier

Defoe also wrote a three-volume travel book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27) that provided a vivid first-hand account of the state of the country. Other non-fiction books include The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and London, the Most Flourishing City in the Universe (1728). Defoe published over 560 books and pamphlets and is considered to be the founder of British journalism.

[edit] Robinson Crusoe

Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) tells of a man's shipwreck on a deserted island and his subsequent adventures. The author based part of his narrative on the story of the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years stranded on the island of Juan Fernandez.^[4] He may have also been inspired by the Latin or English translation of a book by the Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition of the book was entitled Philosophus Autodidactus and it was an earlier novel that is also set on a deserted island.^{[14][15][16][17]}

A house near London, England, where Defoe once resided.

Tim Severin's book Seeking Robinson Crusoe (2002) unravels a much wider range of potential sources of inspiration. Severin concludes his investigations by stating that the real Robinson Crusoe figure was Henry Pitman, a castaway who had been surgeon to the Duke of Monmouth. Pitman's short book about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony for his part in the Monmouth Rebellion, his shipwrecking and subsequent desert island misadventures was published by J. Taylor of Paternoster Street, London, whose son William Taylor later published Defoe's novel. Severin argues that since Pitman appears to have lived in the lodgings above the father's publishing house and since Defoe was a mercer in the area at the time, Defoe may have met Pitman and learned of his experiences as a castaway. If he didn't meet Pitman, Severin points out that Defoe, upon submitting even a draft of a novel about a castaway to his publisher, would undoubtedly have learned about Pitman's book published by his father, especially since the interesting castaway had previously lodged with them at their former premises.

Severin also provides evidence in his book that another publicised case^[18] of a real-life marooned Miskito Central American man named only as Will may have caught Defoe's attention, inspiring the depiction of Man Friday in his novel.

The novel has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilisation, as a manifesto of economic individualism and as an expression of European colonial desires but it also shows the importance of repentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. It is also considered by many to be the first novel written in English. Early critics, such as Robert Louis Stevenson admired it saying that the footprint scene in Crusoe was one of the four greatest in English literature and most unforgettable; more prosaically, Dr. Wesley Vernon has seen the origins of forensic podiatry in this episode.^[3] It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade as works like Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) adapt its premise and has provoked modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (in English, Friday) (1967). Two sequels followed, Defoe's The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and his Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe: with his Vision of the angelick world (1720). Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) in part parodies Defoe's adventure novel.

[edit] Captain Singleton

Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton (1720), a bipartite adventure story whose first half covers a traversal of Africa and whose second half taps into the contemporary fascination with piracy. It has been commended for its sensitive depiction of the close relationship between the eponymous hero and his religious mentor, the Quaker William Walters.

[edit] Memoirs of a Cavalier

Later, Defoe wrote Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War.

[edit] A Journal of the Plague Year

A work that is often read as if it were non-fiction is his account of the Great Plague of London in 1665: A Journal of the Plague Year, a complex historical novel published in 1722. In November 1703, a hurricane-like storm hit London, now known as The Great Storm. (It remains one of the greatest storms in British history.) Yet another of the remarkable events in Defoe's life, the storm was the subject of his book The Storm.^[3] Defoe describes the aftermath of the incident, “The streets lay so covered with tiles and slates from the tops of the houses [. . .] that all the tiles in 50 miles round would be able to repair but a small part of it."^[3]

[edit] Colonel Jack

Colonel Jack (1722) follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty and crime to colonial prosperity, military and marital imbroglios and religious conversion, driven by a problematic notion of becoming a "gentleman."

[edit] Moll Flanders and Roxana

Also in 1722, Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, another first-person picaresque novel of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England. The titular heroine appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to retain the reader's sympathy.

Moll Flanders and Defoe's final novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) are examples of the remarkable way in which Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn from life") characters, not least in that they are women. The latter narrates the moral and spiritual decline of a high society courtesan.

Death[link]

Daniel Defoe died on 24 April 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, London, where his grave can still be visited.

Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names.^[19]

Bibliography[link]

Fiction

• The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705)
• Atlantis Major (1711)
• Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
• The King of Pirates (1719)
• Captain Singleton (1720)
• Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720)
• A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
• Moll Flanders (1722)
• Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)
• The Pirate Gow, an account of John Gow
• Colonel Jack

Non-fiction

• The Storm (1704)
• The Family Instructor (1715)
• A General History of the Pyrates (1724), Defoe's authorship of this pseudonymous work is disputed
• A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (1724–1727)
• The Political History of the Devil (1726)

Essays

• The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703)
• Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720)
• The Complete English Tradesman
• An Essay Upon Projects
• An Essay Upon Literature (1726)
• Mere Nature Delineated (1726)
• Conjugal Lewdness (1727)
• A Plan of the English Commerce (1728)

Poems

• The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr (1701)
• Hymn to the Pillory (1703)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Daniel Defoe

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Daniel Defoe

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Daniel Defoe

• Works by Daniel Defoe at Project Gutenberg
• Daniel Defoe fiction at The Literature Network
• Full online versions of various copies of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the Robinsonades
• TrueScans.com Click on Defoe to obtain comprehensive information on The History Of The Union Of Great Britain Edinburgh, Heirs of Anderson, 1709
• Full texts in German and English – eLibrary Projekt (eLib)
• The Journeys of Daniel Defoe around Britain (from a Vision of Britain)
• Russian toponyms in Daniel Defoe's novels
• Life of Daniel Defoe at luminarium.org
• Defoe, Daniel 1661?-1731 WorldCat Identity

v t e Works by Daniel Defoe Novels Robinson Crusoe (1719) The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) Captain Singleton (1720) Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) Moll Flanders (1721) A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) Colonel Jack Other fiction The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705) Atlantis Major (1711) The King of Pirates (1719) The Pirate Gow, an account of John Gow Non-fiction The Storm (1704) The Family Instructor (1715) Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720) A General History of the Pyrates (1724, disputed) A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724-27) The Complete English Tradesman The Political History of the Devil (1726) Mere Nature Delineated (1726) Conjugal Lewdness (1727) Essays The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703) An Essay Upon Literature (1726) Conjugal Lewdness (1727) A Plan of the English Commerce (1728) An Essay Upon Projects Poems The True-Born Englishman (1701) Hymn to the Pillory (1703)

Jules Verne
Born	Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-02-08)February 8, 1828 Nantes, France
Died	March 24, 1905(1905-03-24) (aged 77) Amiens, France
Occupation	Author
Language	French
Nationality	French
Genres	Science fiction
Notable work(s)	Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen
Spouse(s)	Honorine Hebe du Fraysse de Viane (Morel) Verne
Children	Michel Verne and step-daughters Valentine and Suzanne Morel
Influences Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Józef Sękowski, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Jacques Arago, Daniel Defoe, Johann David Wyss, George Sand, Erckmann-Chatrian, Adolphe d'Ennery
Influenced H.G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Donald G. Payne, Steampunk, Emilio Salgari, Paschal Grousset, Ray Bradbury
Signature

Jules Gabriel Verne (French pronunciation: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre.^[1] He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the second most translated author in the world (after Agatha Christie).^[2] Some of his books have also been made into live-action and animated films and television shows. Verne is often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", a title sometimes shared with Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells.^[3]

Early life[link]

Jules Verne was born in Nantes, in France, to Pierre Verne, an attorney, and his wife, Sophie Allote de la Fuÿe.^[4] Jules spent his early years at home with his parents in the bustling harbor city of Nantes. The family spent summers in a country house just outside the city, in Brains on the banks of the Loire River. Here Jules and his brother Paul would often rent a boat for one franc a day. The sight of the many ships navigating the river sparked Jules's imagination, as he describes in the autobiographical short story "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse". At the age of nine, Jules and Paul, of whom he was very fond, were sent to boarding school at the Saint Donatien College (Petit séminaire de Saint-Donatien). As a child, he developed a great interest in travel and exploration, a passion he showed as a writer of adventure stories and science fiction. His interest in writing often cost him progress in other subjects.

At the boarding school, Verne studied Latin, which he used in his short story "Le Mariage de Monsieur Anselme des Tilleuls" in the mid 1850s. One of his teachers may have been the French inventor Brutus de Villeroi,^{[citation needed]} professor of drawing and mathematics at the college in 1842, and who later became famous for creating the US Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator. De Villeroi may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, although no direct exchanges between the two men have been recorded.

Verne's second French biographer, his grand-niece Marguerite Allotte de la Fuÿe,^[5] formulated the rumor that Verne was so fascinated with adventure at an early age that he stowed away on a ship bound for the West Indies, but that Jules's voyage was cut short when he found his father waiting for him at the next port.

Literary debut[link]

After completing his studies at the lycée, Verne went to Paris to study law. Around 1848, in conjunction with Michel Carré, he began writing libretti for operettas, five of them for his friend the composer Aristide Hignard, who also set Verne's poems as chansons. For some years, his attentions were divided between the theater and work, but some travelers' stories which he wrote for the Musée des familles revealed to him his true talent: the telling of delightfully extravagant voyages and adventures to which cleverly prepared scientific and geographical details lent an air of verisimilitude.

When Verne's father discovered that his son was writing rather than studying law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. Verne was forced to support himself as a stockbroker, which he hated despite being somewhat successful at it. During this period, he met Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, who offered him writing advice.

Verne also met Honorine de Viane Morel, a widow with two daughters. They were married on January 10, 1857. With her encouragement, he continued to write and actively looked for a publisher. On August 3, 1861, their son, Michel Verne, was born. Michel married an actress over Verne's objections, had two children by an underage mistress, and buried himself in debts. The relationship between father and son improved as Michel grew older.

It was Jules Verne himself who confirmed once having traveled from Stockholm, Sweden, to Christiania^{[clarification needed]} during 1862.^{[clarification needed][6]} Consequently, Swedish publication of Jules Verne began during the very next year.^[7] En luftballongsresa genom Afrika (A Hot Air Balloon trip through Africa), translated into Swedish, actually is dated 1863 – making it the very first dated Jules Verne full-length book on record.^[8]

A typical Hetzel front cover for a Jules Verne book. The edition is Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras au Pôle Nord, type "Aux deux éléphants".

Verne's situation improved when he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, one of the more important French publishers of the 19th century, who also published Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Erckmann-Chatrian, among others. They formed an excellent writer-publisher team until Hetzel's death. Hetzel helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of Verne's story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers for being "too scientific". With Hetzel's help, Verne rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various political messages.

Unlike En Luftballongsresa Genom Afrika, dated 1863 and published anonymously, Cinq semaines en ballon was undated (circa 1863), but noted its author. It presently is unknown whether such dating and author attribution practice was done intentionally or by accident. It also is unclear as to which book became first to reach publication despite the fact that both express largely identical story lines.^{[clarification needed][9]}

From that point, Verne published two or more volumes a year. The most successful of these include Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864); De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872. The series is collectively known as "Voyages Extraordinaires" ("extraordinary voyages"). Verne could now live on his writings. But most of his wealth came from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), which he wrote with Adolphe d'Ennery. In 1867, Verne bought a small ship, the Saint-Michel, which he successively replaced with the Saint-Michel II and the Saint-Michel III as his financial situation improved. On board the Saint-Michel III, he sailed around Europe. In 1870, he was appointed as "Chevalier" (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur. After his first novel, most of his stories were first serialised in the Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation, a Hetzel biweekly publication, before being published in the form of books. His brother Paul contributed to 40th French climbing of the Mont-Blanc and a collection of short stories – Doctor Ox – in 1874. Verne became wealthy and famous. According to the Unesco Index Translationum, Jules Verne regularly places among the top five most translated authors in the world.

Later years[link]

On March 9, 1886, as Verne was coming home, his twenty-five-year-old nephew, Gaston, shot him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second entered Verne's left leg, giving him a limp that would not be cured. The incident was hushed up by the media, and Gaston spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

After the deaths of Hetzel and his beloved mother Sophie Henriette Allotte de la Fruye in 1887, Jules began writing darker works. This may partly be due to changes in his personality, but an important factor is the fact that Hetzel's son, who took over his father's business, was not as rigorous in his corrections as Hetzel had been. In 1888, Jules Verne entered politics and was elected town councillor of Amiens, where he championed several improvements and served for fifteen years. In 1905, while ill with diabetes, Verne died at his home, 44 Boulevard Longueville (now Boulevard Jules-Verne). Michel oversaw publication of his novels Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World. The "Voyages extraordinaires" series continued for several years afterwards in the same rhythm of two volumes a year. It has later been discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive changes in these stories, and the original versions were published at the end of the 20th century.

In 1863, Jules Verne wrote a novel called Paris in the Twentieth Century about a young man who lives in a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network, yet cannot find happiness and comes to a tragic end. Hetzel thought the novel's pessimism would damage Verne's then-booming career, and suggested he wait 20 years to publish it. Verne put the manuscript in a safe, where it was discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was published in 1994, and around the same time many other Verne novels and short stories were also published for the first time, and these too are gradually appearing in English translation.

Memorials[link]

A restaurant built into the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France is named Le Jules Verne.^[10] In June 1989, the Jules Verne Food Court opened at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands of England; however, it had closed by the mid 1990s due to disappointing trade.^[11]

Hetzel's influence[link]

Hetzel substantially influenced the writings of Verne, who was so happy to finally find a willing publisher that he agreed to almost all changes that Hetzel suggested. Hetzel rejected at least one novel (Paris in the Twentieth Century) and asked Verne to significantly change his other drafts. One of the most important changes Hetzel enforced on Verne was the adoption of optimism in his novels. Verne was in fact not an enthusiast of technological and human progress, as can be seen in his works created before he met Hetzel and after Hetzel's death. Hetzel's demand for optimistic texts proved correct. For example, Mysterious Island originally ended with the survivors returning to the mainland forever nostalgic about the island. Hetzel decided that the heroes should live happily, so in the revised draft, they use their fortunes to build a replica of the island. Many translations are like this. Also, in order not to offend France's then-ally, Russia, the origin and past of the famous Captain Nemo were changed from those of a Polish refugee avenging the partitions of Poland and the death of his family in the January Uprising repressions to those of an Indian prince fighting the British Empire after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Bibliography[link]

Cover of L'Algerie Magazine, June 15, 1884: A drawing of Jules Verne and some of the creatures from his novels.

Verne wrote numerous works, most famous of which are the 54 novels comprising the Voyages Extraordinaires. He also wrote short stories, essays, plays, and poems.

His first and better known works include:

• A Voyage in a Balloon (Un Voyage en ballon, August 1851 as published in Musée des familles)^[12]
• Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq semaines en ballon, 1863)^[13]
• Paris in the Twentieth Century (Paris au XX^e siècle, 1863, not published until 1994)
• A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre, 1864)
• From the Earth to the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune, 1865)
• The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras, 1866)
• In Search of the Castaways or Captain Grant's Children (Les Enfants du capitaine Grant, 1867–1868)
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 1870)
• Around the Moon (Autour de la Lune, a sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1870)
• A Floating City (Une ville flottante, 1871)
• Dr. Ox's Experiment (Une fantaisie du Docteur Ox, 1872)
• The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais, 1872 )
• The Fur Country (Le Pays des fourrures, 1873)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, 1873)
• The Survivors of the Chancellor (Le Chancellor, 1875)
• The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse, 1875)
• The Blockade Runners (Les Forceurs de blocus, 1876)
• Michael Strogoff (Michel Strogoff, 1876)
• Off on a Comet (Hector Servadac, 1877)
• The Child of the Cavern, also known as Black Diamonds or The Black Indies (Les Indes noires, 1877)
• Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (Un capitaine de quinze ans, 1878)
• The Begum's Fortune (Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum, 1879)
• The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur, 1879)
• Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine), 1879
• Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon (La Jangada, 1881)
• The Green Ray (Le Rayon vert, 1882)
• Kéraban the Inflexible (Kéraban-le-têtu, 1883)
• Frritt-Flacc (1884)
• The Vanished Diamond (L’Étoile du Sud, 1884)
• The Archipelago on Fire (L’Archipel en feu, 1884)
• Mathias Sandorf (1885)
• Robur the Conqueror or The Clipper of the Clouds (Robur-le-Conquérant, 1886)
• Ticket No. "9672" (Un billet de loterie, 1886 )
• North Against South (Nord contre Sud, 1887)
• The Flight to France (Le Chemin de France, 1887)
• Family Without a Name (Famille sans nom, 1888)
• Two Years' Vacation (Deux ans de vacances, 1888)
• The Purchase of the North Pole (Sans dessus dessous, the second sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1889)
• César Cascabel (1890)
• Mistress Branican (1891)
• The Carpathian Castle (Le Château des Carpathes, 1892)
• Claudius Bombarnac (Claudius Bombarnac, 1893)
• Foundling Mick (P’tit-Bonhomme, 1893)
• Propeller Island (L’Île à hélice, 1895)
• Facing the Flag (Face au drapeau, 1896)
• Clovis Dardentor (1896)
• The Sphinx of the Ice Fields or An Antarctic Mystery (Le Sphinx des glaces, a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1897)
• The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque, 1897)
• The Village in the Treetops (Le Village aérien, 1901)
• The Kip Brothers (Les Frères Kip,1902)
• Master of the World (Maître du monde, sequel to Robur the Conqueror, 1904)
• Invasion of the Sea (L’Invasion de la mer, 1904)
• A Drama in Livonia (Un drame en Livonie, 1904)
• The Lighthouse at the End of the World (Le Phare du bout du monde, 1905)
• The Chase of the Golden Meteor (La Chasse au météore, 1908)
• The Danube Pilot (Le Pilote du Danube, 1908)
• The Survivors of the "Jonathan" (Les Naufragés du « Jonathan », 1909)

See also[link]

Brittany portal

	Book: Jules Verne
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

References[link]

1. ^ Roberts, Adam (2007). "7. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells". The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 129–155. ISBN 0-230-54691-9. http://www.scribd.com/doc/16511205/The-History-of-Science-Fiction. Retrieved 2011-05-25. 
2. ^ UNESCO Statistics. "Index Translationum - "TOP 50" Author". United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatexp.aspx?crit1L=5&nTyp=min&topN=50. Retrieved 2011-06-20. 
3. ^ Adam Charles Roberts (2000), "The History of Science Fiction": Page 48 in Science Fiction, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-19204-8. Others who are popularly called the "Father of Science Fiction" include Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells, see the list of people known as father or mother of something.
4. ^ « N. Allot, Écossais, venu en France avec la Garde Écossaise de Louis XI, rendit service au roi qui l'anoblit, et lui donna « le droit de Fuye », c'est-à-dire celui d'avoir un colombier, ce qui était un privilège royal. L'archer écossais se fixa près de Loudun, construisit un château et devint Allotte, seigneur de la Fuÿe ». Cf. Jean-Jules Verne, Jules Verne, Hachette, 1973, page 21.
5. ^ Smyth, Edmund J (2000). Jules Verne: Narratives of Modernity. Liverpool University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-85323-704-4. 
6. ^ McClure's Magazine Volume II, No. 2, page 122; January 1894; R. H. Shekard. Article entitled, Jules Verne at Home -- His own Account of his Life and Work.
7. ^ Swedish bibliography of 'En luftballongsresa genom Afrika'; 1863
8. ^ TrueScans of En Luftballongsresa Genom Afrika, dated 1863 -- Seventh and eighth scans at bottom of webpage
9. ^ TrueScans of En Luftballongsresa Genom Afrika, dated 1863
10. ^ "Le Jules Verne, restaurant at the Eiffel Tower in Paris". Dininginfrance.com. 2008-11-22. http://www.dininginfrance.com/jules_verne.htm. Retrieved 2011-06-27. 
11. ^ Peter Rhodes (2006-12-18). "Food court on Merry Hill menu « Express & Star". Expressandstar.com. http://www.expressandstar.com/latest/2006/12/18/food-court-on-merry-hill-menu/. Retrieved 2011-06-27. 
12. ^ TrueScans of Un Voyage en ballon, 1851; A Voyage in a Balloon, 1852; and Voyage in a Balloon, 1852
13. ^ TrueScans of En Luftballongsresa Genom Afrika, dated 1863 (Cinq semaines en ballon circa 1863)

Further reading[link]

• William Butcher, Arthur C. Clarke (Introduction) (2006). Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography. ISBN 1-56025-854-3
• Herbert R. Lottman (1997). Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography. ISBN 0-312-14636-1
• Philippe Melot, Jean-Marie Embs (2005).Le Guide Jules Verne. Les Editions de l'Amateur, Paris.ISBN 2-85917-417-6
• Françoise Schiltz (2011). The Future Revisited: Jules Verne on Screen in 1950s America. Chaplin Books, Gosport. ISBN 0-9565595-2-2
• Marguerite Allotte de la Fuÿe (1928). Jules Verne, sa vie, son oeuvre (Original ed.). Paris: Simon Kra. 
  • Translated as Marguerite Allotte de la Fuÿe (1954). Jules Verne. Erik de Mauny (transl.). London: Staples Press. 
• Marguerite Allotte de la Fuÿe (1966). Jules Verne, sa vie, son oeuvre (2nd ed.). Hachette. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jules Verne

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jules Verne

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Jules Verne

Bibliography

• Les Voyages Extraordinaires – list of Verne works Compiled by Dennis Kytasaari. Bibliography.

Sources

• Works by Jules Verne at Project Gutenberg
• Jules Verne's works: text, concordances and frequency list
• A Jules Verne Centennial 1905–2005: A selection of early Jules Verne books and illustrations at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries edited by Norman M. Wolcott.
• Zvi Har'El's Jules Verne Collection, including the Jules Verne Virtual Library, online sources of 51 of Jules Verne's novels translated into eight languages.
• The Jules Verne Collecting Resource Page, complete online sources, posters, cards, autographs, first edition covers, etc..

Biography

• Biography of Jules Verne

Reviews

• "Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction?", John Derbyshire, The New Atlantis, Number 12, Spring 2006, pp. 81–90. A review of four new Jules Verne translations from the "Early Classics of Science Fiction" series by Wesleyan University Press.
• Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography, by Herbert R. Lottman – a review.

Misc

• The maps from the Voyages Extraordinaires, scans of all the maps that were included in the original editions of Jules Verne’s novels.
• Jules Verne Museum located in Nantes, France.

Resources

• North American Jules Verne Society
• Centre International Jules Verne

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

Charlotte Brontë
Portrait by George Richmond
Born	(1816-04-21)21 April 1816 Thornton, Yorkshire, England
Died	31 March 1855(1855-03-31) (aged 38) Haworth, Yorkshire, England
Pen name	Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley Currer Bell
Occupation	Novelist, poet
Nationality	English
Genres	Fiction, poetry
Notable work(s)	Jane Eyre Villette
Spouse(s)	Arthur Bell Nichols (1854–1855 (her death))
Signature

Charlotte Brontë ( /ˈbrɒnti/; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.

Early life and education[link]

Charlotte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire in 1816, the third of six children, to Maria (née Branwell) and her husband Patrick Brontë (formerly surnamed Brunty or Prunty), an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1820, the family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate of St Michael and All Angels Church. Charlotte's mother died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to be taken care of by her sister Elizabeth Branwell.

In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (Charlotte later used the school as the basis for the fictional Lowood School in Jane Eyre). The school's poor conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two elder sisters, Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon after their father removed them from the school.^[1] At home in Haworth Parsonage Charlotte acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters".^{[citation needed]} She and the other surviving children — Branwell, Emily, and Anne – created their own literary fictional worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of these imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic stories about their imagined country ("Angria") and Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about theirs ("Gondal"). The sagas which they created were elaborate and convoluted (and still exist in partial manuscripts) and provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for their literary vocations in adulthood.^{[citation needed]} Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head, Mirfield, from 1831 to 32, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.^[1] During this period, she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf (1833) under the name of Wellesley. Charlotte returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839, she took up the first of many positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841. Politically a Tory, she preached tolerance rather than revolution. She held high moral principles, and, despite her shyness in company, she was always prepared to argue her beliefs.^[2][3]

Brussels[link]

Plaque in Brussels

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll in a boarding school run by Constantin Heger (1809–96) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger (1804–87). In return for board and tuition, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the boarding school was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt who joined the family after the death of their mother to look after the children, died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the boarding school. Her second stay at the boarding school was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She finally returned to Haworth in January 1844 and later used her time at the boarding school as the inspiration for some experiences in The Professor and Villette.

First publication[link]

In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a joint collection of poetry under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. These pseudonyms deliberately veiled the sisters' gender whilst preserving their real initials, thus Charlotte was "Currer Bell". "Bell" was also the middle name of Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, whom Charlotte would later marry. Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte later wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because — without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.^[4]

Although only two copies of the collection of poetry were sold, the sisters continued writing for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use their noms de plume when sending manuscripts to potential publishers.

[edit] Jane Eyre

Title page of the first edition of Jane Eyre

Charlotte's first manuscript, called The Professor, did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response she received from Smith, Elder & Co of Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works which "Currer Bell" might wish to send.^[5] Charlotte responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August 1847, and six weeks later this second manuscript (titled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) was published. Jane Eyre was a success, and initially received favourable reviews. Straightaway there was speculation about the identity of Currer Bell, and whether Bell was a man or a woman. A couple of months later this speculation heightened upon the subsequent publication of the first novels by Charlotte's sisters: Emily's Wuthering Heights (by "Ellis Bell") and Anne's Agnes Grey (by "Acton Bell").^[6] Accompanying this speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Charlotte's work; accusations began to be made that Charlotte's writing was "coarse",^[7] a judgement which was made more readily once it was suspected that "Currer Bell" was a woman.^[8] However sales of Jane Eyre continued to be strong, and may even have increased due to the novel's developing reputation as an 'improper' book.^[9]

[edit] Shirley and family bereavements

Following the success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte began work in 1848 on the manuscript of what was to become her second novel, Shirley. However the manuscript was only partially completed when the Brontë household suffered a tragic turn of events, experiencing the deaths of three family members within a period of only eight months. In September 1848 Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died of chronic bronchitis and marasmus exacerbated by heavy drinking, although Charlotte believed his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell was also a suspected "opium eater", (i.e. a laudanum addict). Emily became seriously ill shortly after Branwell's funeral, dying of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in May 1849. Charlotte was unable to continue writing during this period.

After Anne's death Charlotte resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,^[10] and Shirley was published in October 1849. Shirley deals with the themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in society. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written from the first-person perspective of the main character, Shirley is written from the third-person perspective of a narrator. It consequently lacks the emotional immediacy of Jane Eyre,^[11] and reviewers found it less shocking.

In society[link]

In view of the success of her novels, particularly Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming friends with Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell, and acquainted with William Makepeace Thackeray and G. H. Lewes. However Charlotte never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not want to leave her ageing father's side. Thackeray’s daughter, the writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie recalled a visit to her father by Charlotte:

…two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the books – the wonderful books… The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter… Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess… the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all… after Miss Brontë had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him… long afterwards… Mrs. Procter asked me if I knew what had happened… It was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life… the ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club.^[12]

Friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell[link]

Charlotte sent copies of Shirley to selected leading authors of the day, including Elizabeth Gaskell. Gaskell and Charlotte subsequently met in August 1850^[13] and began a friendship which, whilst not necessarily close, was significant in that Gaskell would write a biography of Charlotte after Charlotte's death in 1855. The biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, was published in 1857 and was unusual at the time in that, rather than analysing its subject's achievements, it instead concentrated on the private details of Charlotte's life, in particular placing emphasis on aspects which countered the accusations of 'coarseness' which had been levelled at Charlotte's writing.^[14] Though frank in places, Gaskell was selective about which details she revealed; for example, she suppressed details of Charlotte's love for Heger, a married man, as being too much of an affront to contemporary morals and as a possible source of distress to Charlotte's still-living friends, father and husband.^[15] Gaskell also provided doubtful and inaccurate information about Patrick Brontë, claiming, for example, that he did not allow his children to eat meat. This is refuted by one of Emily Brontë's diary papers, in which she describes the preparation of meat and potatoes for dinner at the parsonage, as Juliet Barker points out in her recent biography, The Brontës. It has been argued that the particular approach of The Life of Charlotte Brontë transferred the focus of attention away from the 'difficult' novels of not just Charlotte but all the Brontë sisters, and began a process of sanctification of their private lives.^[16]

[edit] Villette

Charlotte's third published novel (and her last to be published during her lifetime) was Villette, which came out in 1853. The main themes of Villette include isolation, and how such a condition can be borne,^[17] and the internal conflict brought about by societal repression of individual desire.^[18] The book's main character, Lucy Snowe, travels abroad to teach in a boarding school in the fictional town of Villette, where she encounters a culture and religion different to her own, and where she falls in love with a man ('Paul Emanuel') whom she cannot marry due to societal forces. Her experiences result in her having a breakdown, but eventually she achieves independence and fulfilment in running her own school. Villette marked Charlotte's return to the format of writing from a first-person perspective (that of Lucy Snowe), a technique which she had used so successfully in Jane Eyre. Also similar to Jane Eyre was Charlotte's use of aspects from her own life history as inspiration for fictional events in the novel,^[18] in particular her reworking of her own time spent at the pensionnat in Brussels into Lucy spending time teaching at the boarding school, and her own falling in love with Constantin Heger into Lucy falling in love with 'Paul Emanuel'. Villette was acknowledged by the critics of the day as being a potent and sophisticated piece of writing, although it was still criticised for its 'coarseness' and for not being suitably 'feminine' in its portrayal of Lucy's desires.^[19]

Illness and subsequent death[link]

In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate and, in the opinion of many scholars,^[who?] the model for several of her literary characters such as Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers.^{[citation needed]} She became pregnant soon after the marriage. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and according to Gaskell, her earliest biographer, she was attacked by "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness."^[20] Charlotte died, along with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, at the young age of 38. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis), but many biographers^[who?] suggest she may have died from dehydration and malnourishment, caused by excessive vomiting from severe morning sickness or hyperemesis gravidarum. There is also evidence to suggest that Charlotte died from typhus she may have caught from Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontë household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her.^{[citation needed]} Charlotte was interred in the family vault in The Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.

Posthumously, her first-written novel was published in 1857. The fragment she worked on in her last years in 1860 has been twice completed by recent authors, the more famous version being Emma Brown: A Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Brontë by Clare Boylan in 2003. Much Angria material, too, has appeared in published form since the author's death.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Branwell Brontë, Painting of the 3 Brontë Sisters, l to r Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Branwell painted himself out of the painting of his three sisters.

• 

  Charlotte Brontë, photograph, 1854

• 

  A postum idealized portrait by Duyckinick, 1873, based on a drawing by George Richmond

• 

  Portrait by J. H. Thompson at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Bibliography[link]

Juvenilia[link]

• The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 - 3 (August 1830)
• The Spell
• The Secret
• Lily Hart
• The Foundling
• The Green Dwarf
• My Angria and the Angrians
• Albion and Marina
• Tales of the Islanders
• Tales of Angria (written 1838–1839 - a collection of childhood and young adult writings including five short novels)
  • Mina Laury
  • Stancliffe's Hotel
  • The Duke of Zamorna
  • Henry Hastings
  • Caroline Vernon
  • The Roe Head Journal Fragments

The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense was written in 1833 under the pseudonym Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley. It shows the influence of Walter Scott, and Brontë's modifications to her earlier gothic style have led Christine Alexander to comment that, in the work, "it is clear that Brontë was becoming tired of the gothic mode per se".^[21]

Novels[link]

• Jane Eyre, published 1847
• Shirley, published in 1849
• Villette, published in 1853
• The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, submitted at first along with Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, then separately, and rejected in either form by many publishing houses, published posthumously in 1857
• Emma, unfinished; Charlotte Brontë wrote only 20 pages of the manuscript, published posthumously in 1860. In recent decades, at least two continuations of this fragment have appeared:

• Emma, by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady", published 1980; although this has been attributed to Elizabeth Goudge,^[22] the actual author was Constance Savery.^[23]
• Emma Brown, by Clare Boylan, published 2003

Poetry[link]

• Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
• Selected Poems of The Brontës, Everyman Poetry (1997)

	Novels portal
	Poetry portal

Notes[link]

References[link]

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
• Margaret Lane (1953) The Brontë Story: a reconsideration of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Further reading[link]

• The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, 3 volumes edited by Margaret Smith
• The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell
• Charlotte Brontë, Winifred Gérin
• Charlotte Brontë: a passionate life, Lyndal Gordon
• The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets, Dennis Low (Chapter 1 contains a revisionist contextualisation of Robert Southey's infamous letter to Charlotte Brontë)
• Charlotte Brontë: Unquiet Soul, Margot Peters
• In the Footsteps of the Brontës, Ellis Chadwick
• Charlotte Brontë, Rebecca Fraser
• The Brontës, Juliet Barker
• Charlotte Brontë and her Dearest Nell, Barbara Whitehead
• The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller
• A Life in Letters, selected by Juliet Barker
• Charlotte Brontë and her Family, Rebecca Fraser
• The Oxford Reader's Companion to the Brontës, Christine Alexander & Margaret Smith
• A Brontë Family Chronology, Edward Chitham
• The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte, James Tilly, 1999
• I Love Charlotte Bronte, Michelle Daly 2009

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charlotte Brontë

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charlotte Brontë

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charlotte Brontë

• Website of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire
• Online editions of Charlotte Brontë's works at eBooks@Adelaide
• Works by Charlotte Brontë at Project Gutenberg
• Charlotte Brontë – Drawing by George Richmond (National Portrait Gallery)
• Modern Day Images of Charlotte Bronte Residences
• Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter, from Project Gutenberg
• Charlotte Brontë at the Internet Book List
• More Information about Charlotte Bronte
• Charlotte's Web: A Hypertext on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
• Memorial Page for Charlotte Bronte on FindaGrave
• Various images depicting residences of Charlotte Bronte
• 'Napoleon and the Spectre', taken from the manuscript of the Green Dwarf
• 'The Secret' and 'Lily Hart': An Early Manuscript by Charlotte Bronte

v t e Brontë sisters Charlotte The Green Dwarf (1833) Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) The Professor (1857) Emily Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Collaborative work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) List of Brontë poems Family Patrick Brontë Branwell Brontë Maria Brontë Elizabeth Brontë Maria Branwell Arthur Bell Nicholls See also Brontë Country Brontë Parsonage Museum Brontë Waterfall Brontë Way Cowan Bridge School Constantin Héger Ellen Nussey Gondal Victorian literature