Un)Masked Author to Mythic Woman

A new scholar book with Brontë-related content:

Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women WritersA Hall of Mirrors and the Long Nineteenth Century
Editors: Ayres, Brenda (Ed.)
Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN 978-3-319-56750-1

This book is an investigation of the biases, contradictions, errors, ambiguities, gaps, and historical contexts in biographies of controversial British women who published during the long nineteenth century, many of them left unchecked and perpetuated from publication to publication. Fourteen scholars analyze the agenda, problems, and strengths of biographical material, highlighting the flaws, deficiencies, and influences that have distorted the portraits of women such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Sydney Owenson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Lady Florence Dixie, George Eliot, and Edith Simcox. Through exposing distortions, this fascinating study demonstrates that biographies are often more about the biographer than they are about the biographee and that they are products of the time in which they are written.

Contains the chapters:  The Biographer as Biographee: Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) by Anna Koustinoudi and Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855): (Un)Masked Author to Mythic Woman by Sarah E. Maier