Charlotte Bronte

British writer, one of three sisters who became published authors. Together they opened a school in 1841. Six years later, Charlotte shocked the Victorian world with her "Jane Eyre," a passionate tale of repressed sexual longing on the moors. The children's mother, Maria, died at 38 in 1821 and the two oldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, died less than four years later from TB. The only boy, Bramwell, ruined by alcohol and laudanum, died rather suddenly, apparently of TB, in September 1848 at age 31. The family was raised in Haworth, a small, industrial township in the heart of a much larger chapelry where they were exposed to heated discussions of politics and religion and a thriving culture. Their father, Patrick (nee Brunty, from Ireland), was described by friends and servants as kind and genial, not the ogre pictured by some biographers. Charlotte was the bossy, controlling older sister, capable of ruthlessness, fury and sarcasm, a hypochondriac who suffered from migraines. She was only 4' 9" tall. Fascinated and intimidated by that which lay outside of Haworth, she made trips to London to meet the intelligentsia, but always as a freakish outsider, improperly dressed, awkward and ambivalent about the very people with whom she longed to mingle. Married in June 1854 to Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, her happiness was brief. She died nine months later, on 31 March 1855 in Haworth as the result of complications of a pregnancy. She was the last surviving member of the family. Link to Wikipedia biography