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    Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart
    Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart
    Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart
    Audiobook16 hours

    Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart

    Written by Claire Harman

    Narrated by Corrie James

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Charlotte Bronteuml; famously lived her life in a parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and creative siblings. Claire Harman's biography transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to rebellion and ambition. Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte's inner life with absorbing, novelistic intensity. She seizes upon a moment in Charlotte's adolescence that ignited her determination: while working at a school in Brussels, Charlotte fell in love with her married professor, a man who treated her as ldquo;nothing special.rdquo; She channeled her torment into her first novel and resolved to bring it to the world's attention.Jane Eyre set London abuzz with speculation: Who was this fiery author demanding love and justice for her plain heroine? Charlotte Bronteuml;'s blazingly intelligent women with hidden passions would transform English literature.Charlotte Bronteuml;#160;is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time. Shaped by Charlotte's lifelong struggle to claim love for herself, Harman's richly insightful biography offers readers many of the pleasures of Bronteuml;'s own work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9781681680392
    Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart
    Author

    Claire Harman

    Claire Harman's first book, a biography of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1990, and her second, Fanny Burney: A Biography was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. Since 2003 she has been teaching a course in biography at Columbia University and lives in New York City and Oxford.

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    Reviews for Charlotte Bronte

    4.5/5

    72 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Moving, hard-to-put-down, sometimes heartbreaking, and utterly fascinating, Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart is less massive than Juliet Barker’s The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors, but it’s a good choice for someone not ready to dive into the delights of Barker’s thorough, 1,000+ page tome. In spite of the title, Charlotte is the main but not only focus this new biography, because it also covers the lives of Emily, Anne, Branwell and their father--they were such a close family it would be impossible to leave any of them out. All four of the siblings were imaginative and obsessive writers so that from a very young age they were creating their own shared literary worlds. I especially enjoyed the way Harman related the novels the sisters published to their life experiences. Anyone who loves Jane Eyre, or who is interested in life outside of London during the middle of Victoria's reign, will find this biography fascinating. I read an advanced review copy given to me by the publisher; review opinions are mine.
    • 5/5
      I have always been intrigued by the Bronte sisters, curious of their lives and how they came to write some of my favorite books. Although sometimes when you look into the lives of creative people you admire they can really disappoint you. Not so with the Brontes! I only wish they could have had so much more happiness and recognition. Claire Harman's biography is the best type of biography, one that reads like a novel and, in my case, kept me listening and wanting to know more. I feel like I should write Miss Harman a fan letter I enjoyed her book so much. I want to re-read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and read anything else they wrote! I want to visit places they lived and walked and drive my friends and family crazy with facts and stories about them! Maybe I should slow down with the exclamation points...Unfortunately I can't remember the narrator of the audio books name, but she was wonderful! She had a lovely smooth voice and strived to give different cadences and voices when she was reading letters or quoting people, without sounding silly. I will definitely need to own a hardback copy as well as the audio book, I'm hoping there are photos and drawings inside!
    • 5/5
      Loved this book. Harman does a wonderful job telling the story of Bronte's life, which is also the story of her family- her siblings and her father. Her growth as a writer, her growing fame and her drift towards marriage were really interesting to read about. Harman brings Bronte to life, warts and all, especially her selfishness when it came to her relationships and the vivid fictional worlds she created with her siblings. I felt like I learned so much about Bronte and the world she lived in. Wonderful rewarding read.
    • 4/5
      Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte Bronte, entitled Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart, leaves an impression on the reader. After finishing the book, I felt like I’d learned things I didn’t previously know about the reknowned British author, but more importantly, I feel almost as though I knew her—her life’s events and the times she lived in became familiar to me, as I read. I also came to understand Charlotte Bronte’s motives as a writer and where her work originated. It’s Harman’s deft interpretation of research and accessible writing style that lend her work this clarity. Relevant detail and enlightening storytelling also make for stimulating reading. For me, this biography illuminated Charlotte Bronte and showed her in a new light. It’s only fair to note that this image includes facets that are less than desirable, such as her immature love for her mentor, Monsieur Heger; extreme stubborness, illustrated in her quest to see her first novel, The Professor, published after it had already been rejected twice, and the unforgettable mental picture of a petite, heavy-browed spinster with missing teeth. I am glad to know all these things about Charlotte, as well as all the good. I appreciate Claire Harman’s commitment to presenting a well-rounded portrait, based in reality, that leaves Ms. Bronte’s status as a literary icon intact.
    • 5/5
      An excellent biography of Charlotte Bronte that shows her in a completely different light from what has before been revealed. Charlotte's own unrequited love may well have inspired the telling of Jane Eyre.
    • 4/5
      It is obvious that an incredible amount of research went into this book. At times, the scholarly detail is overwhelming, but the compelling tragedy of the Bronte family's lives (and deaths) kept me reading. Because I didn't know much about Charlotte Bronte's life, everything was new. The novels written by Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne with their themes of repressed desires, isolation and loneliness come straight from their experiences. Even though the sisters had good middle-class educations, their only options for income were as governesses or teachers. A career as an author was considered impossible for a woman. We've come a long way since the early 1800s.
    • 3/5
      The narrator, Corrie James, does an excellent job with the audio book version of Claire Harman's biography, Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart. This biography is based on letters unavailable to previous biographers. While this turned out not to be my cup of tea, I this is well researched and narrated and should find a wide audience among Bronte fans and those interested in the lives of women in Victorian times. (I received a copy of this audio book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
    • 5/5
      The audio version read by Corrie James is excellent with an easy to listen to British accent for the remarkable content by Claire Harman. Using previously unavailable letters, she writes the insightful biography of not only Charlotte, but of her entire family, so you can better understand the society of the time, role of women within society's restrictions, and the dynamics of the Bronte family who have created some of the best novels with the works of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte. I received a copy for review from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.
    • 4/5
      Jane Eyre has always been one of my favorite books. I never realized the personal experiences Charlotte Bronte had had impacted her writing so much. Charlotte Bronte: a Fiery Heart does a great job taking the reader through Charlotte's life from childhood to death and beyond. This book was very well written and a very enjoyable read.
    • 3/5
      Charlotte is enigmatic, and, like Lucy Snow in Villette, is in thrall to her own raging emotions and sense of isolated loneliness. If she were alive today she would probably be pierced and tattooed, use recreational drugs, sleep around to get her "daddy's approval" fix, and be bisexual. For Emily I picture a misanthropic D&D'er who evolves into a world-class hacker on the spectrum. She'd have pets, probably cats, wear a lot of eyeliner and a lot of black clothing. Anne would get some necessary dental work and be the conventionally pretty sister who goes on to college and becomes a social worker or child psychiatrist. She would end up being the only one reliable enough to take care of their aging, narcissistic father. Patrick, btw, would try to get the family on a number of reality TV shows. I imagine a mashup of The Osbornes/Kardashians/Modern Family. His quantity of marriages and divorces would be legendary.Their lives were sad and as products of their circumscribed and stifling era they inevitably developed the neuroses and physical illnesses one would expect.
    • 4/5
      The audiobook is well dictated, easy to understand with a pleasant tone. The content is interesting, especially if you are a fan of Charlotte Brontë. The information sounds well-researched and for the most part is interesting to listen to. I received this audiobook through Librarything giveaways in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      Claire Harmon presents Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart on the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth.I was fortunate to receive, for review, the audiobook narrated by Corrie James.The characters are well defined and the narration so precise that I lingered over the discs, savoring every nuance.I was aware that Charlotte's life and observations contributed to the drama and tragedy of her Gothic novels.I was however inclined to think of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 portrayal as the epitome of Victorian womanhood.Fiery Heart is such an insightful title.Additional descriptives for Charlotte that I would now use would be sensual, ambitious, rebellious, passionate, obsessive, repetitive in encouraging the re-emergence of romantic suffering and melancholy.This biography has been a pleasure to review and recommend.5 ★ ♥
    • 2/5
      I received a free copy of the audiobook for review. I would have probably enjoyed this book more if I had read it instead of listening to the audio version. I had a difficult time distinguishing between material being quoted and the author's writing. In addition, I think the title and synopsis is a little misleading because so much of the book was not focused on Charlotte but rather her other family members. The organization of the material was a bit hard to follow and I repeatedly found myself losing interest. Overall, I would say the book wasn't what I expected and for that reason it wasn't a good fit for me.
    • 5/5
      I received a copy of Clare Harman’s Charlotte Bronte a Fiery Heart in Audiobook form from LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. Over the years I have collected and read many biographies and literary books about the Bronte Family especially Charlotte as Jane Eyre is my favorite novel. I have to say that this book is probably one of the better Bronte biographies I have read. I really enjoyed how the author tied in Charlotte’s books as she told the story of her life. It helps to point out where Charlotte got some of the inspiration for her novels and what her feelings might have been as she was writing certain scenes. I think this book really helps readers understand Charlotte and the rest of her family as people instead of the myth that has been what their lives have come to. I really enjoyed the reading of the material by Corrie James. I thought she read so well and it helped the flow of the novel. Anyone who is a fan of Charlotte Bronte and Audiobooks will enjoy this.