Excerpt from The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Elizabeth was left guessing. Sensing parts of Shirley were written by someone in the early days of a devastating bereavement she sent Currer Bell her sympathies. Her pity cut through the artifice, winning trust where public praise and blame failed. In the grateful note she received back, she read, 'Currer Bell must answer Mrs Gaskell's letter. Whether forbidden to do so or not she must acknowledge its kind, generou s sympathy with all her heart.'

She. Her. The mask was lifting, the mystery was unravelling. She was being revealed.

Despite this, the writer – Charlotte Brontë – still withheld her name. Only in the vulnerable moment of using her own voice did its protection fail. She could not deny her grief for the mother and two elder sisters she lost as a child, or her remaining three siblings who all died within eight months of each other, and referred to herself by the shared initials she used for her real and assumed identities. It let her admit the truth:

Dark days she has known; the worst perhaps were days of bereavement, but though CB is the survivor of most who were dear to her, she has one near relative still left, and therefore cannot be said to be quite alone.
Elizabeth's intuitive sympathy flared through the darkness enclosing Charlotte Brontë.

Desperate to force any resemblance between the two sisters she lost in the last eleven months and famous new admirers like Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, Charlotte turned gratefully to William Smith Williams. 'It mournfully pleases me to fancy a remote affinity,' she wrote, straining for any connection. 'Proud am I that I can touch a chord of sympathy in souls so noble.'

Triumphantly, Elizabeth wrote to her friend Katie, 'What will you give me for a secret? She's a she - that I will tell you.'

This set the tone between Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell. In the years to come, it would express itself in ways neither could imagine but both were, as if by a sense of precognition, preparing. It was the start of Elizabeth winning intimacies, encouraging this deeply private woman to expose herself in confessions she could read aloud to her family then pass around for her friends' amusement.

Excerpted from The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson. Copyright © 2025 by Graham Watson. Excerpted by permission of Pegasus Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.