Charlotte Bronte: Truculent Spirit

by Valerie Grosvenor Myer

This study charts Charlotte BrontÎ's critical fortunes over the last fifty years. It looks at the nature of her "romanticism" and her relationship with her readers. All the important writings about her since the 1930's, including feminist and Freudian treatments, are sifted and analyzed. Sharp, lively and original, with full scholarly apparatus, the book will put Charlotte BrontÎ in perspective for the general reader and will be invaluable to the student. Available for the first time in the U.S.
Introduction; "Three Weird Sisters" and Socks for Mr. Nicholls; Mr. Rockingham and Monsieur Beck; "How very corse!"; "Mad Methodist Magazines"; Patrick BrontÎ's^R The Cottage in the Wood and the plot of Jane Eyre; "Hypochondria"; Charlotte and her Unconscious; Jane Eyre; Fairytale and the Imagination; Signs, Presentiments and Sympathies; Style, Suggestion and Emblem; Female Inner Space and Moral Madness; The Maiming of Edward Rochester; a Feminist Document?; Villette; Bibliography; Index

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 25, 1989

About the author

Valerie Winifred Grosvenor, later Myer, was born in Lower Soudley in the Forest of Dean on 13 April 1935 to parents who were second cousins. The family lived in a cottage that apparently had no electricity, sanitation or running water, which, according to Sue Limb who wrote her obituary, led her to remark later in life that "The organic life isn't all it's cracked up to be."

After education at East Dean Grammar School she left to train as a librarian in Gloucester. As a freelance she also wrote articles for the 'Forest of Dean Mercury', a newspaper that eventually employed her as a fully fledged reporter.

In 1958 she moved to the 'Dartford Chronicle' and also undertook editorial work for the women's magazines, 'Housewife' and 'Flair'.

Having met on a ferry in Brittany, she married Michael Myer in 1959 and he introduced her Grosvenor name into his own so as to distinguish himself from others with a simialr surname. He also encouraged her to further her education, which had to be curtailed when she was a teenager due to lack of family funds. As a consequence, with the help of the City Literary Institute, London, she won one of the last mature state scholarships to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she arrived, aged 28, in 1963.

Under the tutelage of Queenie Leavis she graduated with a first in 1966. While an undergraduate she had contributed theatrical reviews of Cambridge and East Anglia theatre for 'the Guardian' and after she graduated she began a career in teaching, editing, for 'The Times Educational Supplement' and 'The Teacher' and writing.

She taught at the Beijing Language Institute, which became the Beijing Languages and Cultures University, when she was caught up in the student protests of 1989. She later taught at a University in Sierra Leone and also in Sweden.

Her published works include a study of Margaret Drabble entitled 'Puritanism and Permissiveness' (1974), two biographies of Jane Austen (1980 and 1997), a biography of Harriette Wilson (1999). She was, indeed, an expert in 18th and 19th century literature and she also wrote biographies of Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Richardson and Laurence Sterne. Also included in her canon is a novel 'The Butterfly House' (1998), which was based on her experiences when teaching in China.

Her last major project was the co-editing of 'The Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature' (2003) into which, despite the onset of Parkinson's Disease, she put all her usual energy and enthusiasm.

Having suffered with Parkinson's Disease for 10 years she took her own life, after carefully explaining the situation to her husband, and died on 7 August 2007.