From Publishers Weekly
Even in their lifetimes, the Bronte sisters—Charlotte, Emily and Anne—were remarkable figures whose literary reputations were often shrouded in a web of myth and lies that to some degree still endures. In this volume, Miller, a literary critic and former deputy literary editor of The Independent, presents a markedly intelligent "metabiography" that sorts through these half-truths to give a fresh, original portrait of three exceptional writers. Celebrated by some of their 19th century readers as literary heroes and castigated by others as reckless and immoral, the Brontes defied conventions even as they tried to live within them: "revolutionizing the imaginative presentation of women’s inner lives" even as they cultivated the social persona of "the modest spinster daughter." Miller traces the trajectory of their careers, particularly Charlotte’s, from their childhood games to the stunning success of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Drawing on a wealth of letters and scholarly works, Miller succeeds in carefully revealing how the rumors that portrayed the Brontes as gothic creatures, saints and martyrs became more important than the women’s novels, "covering and supplanting," as Henry James said, "their matter, their spirit, their style, their talent, their taste." Miller touches on everyone from Elizabeth Gaskell, whose famous Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) "marked the birth of the Brontes as cultural icons," to Ted Hughes, and thus illuminates not only the lives of the sisters, but the significance and import of their work. Ultimately, such literary reclamation is what Miller is after: to clear up the clutter of history, to bring to light the genius and artistry of the novels and to let the Brontes speak for themselves. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Desolate moors, isolated parsonage, doomed siblings and their fevered imaginations--these are elements of the Bronte myth. Charlotte herself had trouble explaining where such powerful fiction as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights came from, and she helped foster the myth to deflect criticism from those who thought her works and those of her sisters were immoral and coarse. The myth was refined by friend and biographer Mrs. Gaskell, who marginalized the writings and crafted a sentimental image of Charlotte as a domestic martyr; later it was adopted by various novelists, dramatists, psycho-biographers, filmmakers, and feminists. Our image of Emily as "mystic of the moors" can be traced, again, to Charlotte, who felt there was something disturbing about Emily's creative gift. It is only recently, Miller asserts, that all of the Brontes have started to emerge from the shadows, with critics and biographers focusing at last on the works rather than just the lives. This book gives serious Bronte readers much to ponder. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“A wonderfully entertaining and often spellbinding account of . . . the process of mythification.” —The New York Times Book Review

[SPINE]
Title: The Bront‘ Myth
Author: Lucasta Miller
Imprint: Anchor Books
[BACK AD]
Biography/Literary Criticism
“Absorbing. . . . Ms. Miller writes with such lucidity, wit and plain common sense that she is able to shed new light on the Bront‘s. . . . [An erudite and clearheaded book.” —The New York Times
In a brilliant combination of biography, literary criticism, and history, The Bront‘ Myth shows how Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bront‘ became cultural icons whose ever-changing reputations reflected the obsessions of various eras.
When literary London learned that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had been written by young rural spinsters, the Bront‘s instantly became as famous as their shockingly passionate books. Soon after their deaths, their first biographer spun the sisters into a picturesque myth of family tragedies and Yorkshire moors. Ever since, these enigmatic figures have tempted generations of readers–Victorian, Freudian, feminist–to reinterpret them, casting them as everything from domestic saints to sex-starved hysterics. In her bewitching “metabiography,” Lucasta Miller follows the twists and turns of the phenomenon of Bront‘-mania and rescues these three fiercely original geniuses from the distortions of legend.

“A juicy new biography of the Bront‘ sisters. . . . Miller ticks off [the] dizzying shifts in the Bront‘ Zeitgeist with great erudition and wit. . . . Miller’s own scholarship is formidable, her voice informal and fresh.” —The Washington Post

“A brilliant, wide-ranging studyÉmeticulously researched, written with wit and relish, and packed with irresistible detail.” —The Times (London)

“Miller unravels the Bront‘ myth with tenacity, detail, and grace–from souvenir tea towels and Haworth Parsonage mugs to Hollywood visions of wind-swept moors. In the process, she restores life to Emily and Anne, and especially to Charlotte.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Provocative The Bront‘ Myth is a first-rate work of scholarship and criticism, and a surprisingly entertaining read. Thanks to Miller’s clearheadedness, it seems unlikely that the Bront‘s will ever again be marginalized into the spooky spinsters of the myth.” —San Jose Mercury News

“[An] ingenious book.” —The New Yorker
“Brilliant and rivetingÉ.Miller’s unputdownable and erudite book has not only left us with a clearer picture and greater understanding of the Bront‘s and the nature of biography, but tells us a lot about ourselves.” —Daily Mail (London)

“Sharply intelligent, original and wittyÉLiterary history is seldom related with such a pleasant combination of brio and erudition.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“Excellent. . . . Lucasta Miller strips away all those inaccurate accretions which have turned Charlotte, Emily and Anne into uncanny, coughing geniuses. . . . Miller’s book is so good, clever and necessary that, far from making biographical writing redundant, it shows us just how wonderful it can occasionally be. The Bront‘ Myth is essential reading.” —Sunday Telegraph (London)

“A witty deconstruction of Bront‘maniaÉdone with a deft, light touch..” —Guardian (UK)

Review
?A brilliant and riveting examination of the Brontë phenomenon.? ? Daily Mail

?A sharp-witted study in literary reputation... Miller supplies a deft and immaculately detailed tracing of the many ?constructions? of Charlotte Brontë.? ? Joanna Griffiths, Observer


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Lucasta Miller, in The Bronte Myth, shows us how the Brontes become cultural symbols almost as soon as their novels were published; how they became notorious even before the veil dropped from their carefully chosen pseudonyms, as Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights, appearing out of nowhere, instantly fascinated, inspired, and scandalized English readers.

The subsequent discovery that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were three youngish spinsters - parson's daughters - living rural lives of utmost propriety made interest in the sisters obsessive. Add a supposedly ferocious father and untimely death, to say nothing of the Victorian penchant for seeing noble sacrifice in every possible situation, and the production of legends multiplied.

Lucasta Miller provides fascinating insight into the manufacture of cultural myth and how it can distort our memory of the artist even as it obscures the art. She traces the reinterpretations, indeed recreations, of the Brontes, from Charlotte's own efforts to soften her dead sisters' reputations and Mrs. Gaskell's classic portrait of the artists as exemplary Christian ladies to the fashionably Freudian psychobiographies of the 1920s and '30s, from counterfeit memorabilia and the promotion of literary tourism to Hollywood representations of gloomy heroines on savage windswept moors. She rescues the Brontes from their admirers and attackers, giving us back three vivid women who were writing in the days when few women dared to try: geniuses and sisters who, in the words of a household witness in the late 1850s, were "as cheerful and full of spirits as possible ... full of fun and merriment."

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Although the book is heavily indebted to recent Bront￯﾿ﾽ scholarship (most notably Lyndall Gordon's superb 1994 biography Charlotte Bront￯﾿ﾽ: A Passionate Life), Ms. Miller writes with such lucidity, wit and plain common sense that she is able to shed new light on the Bront￯﾿ﾽs and the Bront￯﾿ﾽ industry, while at the same time raising important questions about changing fashions in biography writing and academic scholarship. — Michiko Kakutani

The Washington Post

If Miller has a slant of her own, it goes like this: The Bront￯﾿ﾽs (particularly Charlotte) were ambitious, talented, hardworking artists, self-conscious craftswomen who were fully aware of the impact of their fictions on the reading public, including the fiction of their pseudonymous identities and the carefully tended myth of rustic Yorkshire. To the modern ear, this may sound self-evident -- why would anyone doubt that two of the greatest novelists of the 19th century were conscious artists? -- but Miller's impeccably researched book shows us the extent to which the sisters have been deployed as ideological weathervanes, or (to use an image more appropriate to their much-discussed gender) handmaids of intellectual history. — Dana Stevens

The New Yorker

Although a collaborative first book of poems sold only two copies, the Brontë sisters were in their own time subject to the kind of cult fascination that persists today, with thousands of pilgrims journeying every year to the Brontë home, in Yorkshire. Miller’s ingenious book traces this fascination, beginning with Mrs. Gaskell’s famous 1857 biography, which sought to excuse the “coarseness” of novels like “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” by embellishing details of the authors’ gothically miserable childhood. Miller provides a corrective—a biography of a biography—showing how successive generations, including Stracheyan, Freudian, feminist, and poststructural critics, remolded the Brontës to fit their own agendas. Like Mrs. Gaskell’s, these treatments often focussed more on the authors’ lives than on their work, in spite of Charlotte’s plea: “I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.”

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