The Life of Charlotte BronteElizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bront was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Bront's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty eight and death less than a year later. The resulting