Charlotte Brontë (1816 - 1855)

A selective bibliography of open access articles on Charlotte Brontë, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites


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Literary Criticism

Diedrick, J. (removed) Professor Diedrick traces connections between Charlotte Brontë's feminism in Jane Eyre and the tradition of feminist discourse that originated fifty five years before Jane Eyre appeared, when Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Farrell, John P. "A Message For Miss Eyre; or, Jane in Wonderland," Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens:Revue du Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Victoriennes et Edouardiennes de Université Paul-Valéry, 8 (1979) 1-9

Gilbert, Sandra M. Jane Eyre and the secrets of furious lovemaking, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 1998

Giles, Judy. A substantial introduction to Charlotte Brontë from the Literary Encyclopedia. On Jane Eyre (1847); Shirley (1849); Villette (1853)

Hilton, Nelson. A Freudian discussion of Charlotte Brontë from Lexis Complexes

Hoeveler, Diane Long. "Smoke and Mirrors: Internalizing the Magic Lantern Show in Villette." In Gothic Technologies, special Romantic Circles edition, Dec. 2005

Kreilkamp, Ivan. Unuttered: Withheld speech and female authorship in Jane Eyre and Villette, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 1999

Miller, Lucasta. Bio-madness. A review of Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth in the New Statesman, Jan 29, 2001 reviewed by Patricia Duncker (removed from findarticles.com)

Nandrea, Lorri G. Desiring Difference: Sympathy and Sensibility in Jane Eyre, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2003

Nockolds, Peter. "Silent Silvery Star": The planet Venus in the writings of the Brontës, at Victorian Studies Web

Oates, Joyce Carol. Article on Jane Eyre by esteemed novelist from Salon Magazine, includes a Salon discussion group

Renfro, Alicia. Defining Romanticism: The Implications of Nature Personified as Female in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Article contends that both Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë use Nature, envisioned as female, as a means to redefine the masculine prototype of Romanticism

Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology. Publisher's blurb from Cambridge Univ. Press

Starzyk, Lawrence J. "The gallery of memory": The pictoral in Jane Eyre in Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1997

Sutherland, John. A review of two books by John Sutherland. Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Literature / Can Jane Eyre be Happy? More Puzzles in Classic Fiction, in Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 2000

Vanskike, Elliott. Consistent Inconsistencies: The Transvestite Actress Madame Vestris and Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, in Nineteenth Century Literature, Volume 50, Issue 4, March 1996 (removed from www.ucpress.edu/scan/ncl-free/504/articles/vanskike.art504.html)


Postcolonial Response to Jane Eyre

Buchan, Jon. "'Jane's all White' An Examination of Victorian Chromatic Anxiety in Brontė's Jane Eyre." Graduate student paper contends that Jane Eyre demonstrates Charlotte Brontë's white English anxieties about race, empire and chromatic difference. Web published 5/8/2001

A web site examines Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Jean Rhys's "rewriting" of Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea as a form of resistance to the colonial project. Site is a project of MA students at Queen's University, Belfast

Lewis, Liz. "Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys: The representation of the doubleness of selfhood in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." An introductory essay on the authors from the London School of Journalism English Literature Distance Learning Course

Murdoch, H Adlai. Ghosts in the mirror: Colonialism and Creole indeterminacy in Brontë and Sand, on the notion of the Creole in George Sand's Indiana and Jane Eyre. In College Literature, Winter 2002

Simmons, Diane. Jamaica Kincaid and the Canon: In Dialogue With "Paradise Lost" and "Jane Eyre." In MELUS, Summer, 1998

Kendrick, Robert. Edward Rochester and the margins of masculinity in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. In Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1994


Introductory, Biographical, Light Reading

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Complete text of The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell (1857)

Roberts, Michele. How eating becomes a metaphor in the novels of Charlotte Brontë, in the New Statesman, May 5, 2003

The Victorian Web has essays on Charlotte Brontë's writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian cultural and historical context. From Professor George Landow

A collection of articles on Charlotte Brontë from the Times of London, including several on her recently discovered novella Stancliffe's Hotel

A biography from the Books and Writers web site Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland

Early British Sensation, Mystery, and Detective fiction and Charlotte Brontë

Brontë Newsletters U.S. Brontë Society - Region 3. More chatty than scholarly, but many of the contributors have a serious interest in the Brontës

Haworth, Home of the Brontës, short article for the tourist, by Judith Fein

Some older criticism, from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21). Jane Eyre http://www.bartleby.com/223/1202.html, Villette http://www.bartleby.com/223/1204.html


Film Versions

Campbell, Gardner. The presence of Orson Welles in Robert Stevenson's Jane Eyre (1944), on the 1944 film version of Jane Eyre, in Literature Film Quarterly, 2003 by

Alleva, Richard. Jane Eyre. - movie reviews. On the Franco Zeffirelli film version of Jane Eyre, in Commonweal, June 1, 1996

Barbour, David. An Eyre of mystery; broadway's Jane Eyre features a groundbreaking scenic and lighting design On the Broadway musical version of Jane Eyre, in Entertainment Design, May, 2001 (removed from findarticles.com


Bibliography and Web Sites

A Secondary Bibliography for Charlotte Brontë, by Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt

The Brontës: Texts, Sources, and Criticism, includes 14 early (1840s) reviews of the Brontës. By Peter Friesen, SUNY Plattsburgh

"Women in the Literary Marketplace," an online exhibit from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell Univ., contains short entries on several Victorian women authors and their typical themes, information about the publishing context, and some images of first editions

A guide to research resources from the Victoria discussion list for Victorian Studies


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