Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte 1857 is a landmark biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Bronte, and, having been invited to write the official life, determined both to tell the truth and to honour her friend. She contacted those who had known Charlotte and travelled extensively in England and Belgium to gather material. She wrote from a vivid accumulation of letters, interviews, and observation, establishing the details of Charlotte's life and recreating her background, as well as her interaction with her literary sisters Emily and Anne, her brother and her father. Through an often difficult and demanding process, Gaskell created a vital sense of a life hidden from the world. Charlotte was the most robust, gifted and technically competent of her famous sisters. This study of her by a contemporary is an outstanding biography by any standards finely written with a self-effacement on the part of the biographer which