"Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life looks beyond the insistent image of the modest Victorian lady, the slave to duty in the shadow of tombstones. Instead we see a strong, fiery woman who shaped her own life and transformed it into art. This biography looks at the shared gifts and class ambitions of the Bronte family - at the active feminist, Mary Taylor; at the demanding mentor, Constantin Heger; and at the rising publisher, George Smith - as Charlotte strove to possess them in life and fiction. Her highly autobiographical novels refused current bars to women's writing to release a public voice which could speak intimately to her readers."--BOOK JACKET.