Charlotte Brontë's Life Through Clothes

Meet the real, thinking, feeling woman that was Charlotte Brontë, as told in this biography by the surviving witnesses to her life – the clothes that she once wore.

These garments were present as she penned Jane Eyre, as she walked the cobbled streets of Haworth, and as she stood with her fiancé at the altar in the summer of 1854. Yet, until now, their testimonies had remained unheard.

Renowned Brontë scholar and dress historian Eleanor Houghton’s innovative, richly illustrated biography, Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes, finally gives voice to the gowns, bonnets, shawls, corsets, parasols and boots that make up the novelist’s wardrobe.

Secrets are revealed in their very fibres. Brontë’s steel busked corset tells the story of corporate espionage and forbidden love, whilst her striped, silk dress shows how she coped with the new-found pressures of fame. When exposed to 21st-century technology, a tiny sample of fabric from her ‘Thackeray Dress’ reveals important innovations of the Industrial Revolution going on around her, and a black lace veil, worn after the deaths of her siblings, expresses how she dealt with repeated familial loss.

These clothes, some of which still bear the imprint of her foot or the sweat from her pores, prove themselves to be far more than mere celebrity curios. When ‘read’ alongside letters, portraits, her novels and the recollections of those who knew her well, Charlotte emerges as a woman altogether braver, more vulnerable, less isolated, less provincial, more fashion conscious than anyone ever expected. Myths are shattered, preconceptions challenged, and the real Charlotte Brontë, beyond the famous author, finally emerges.