Monday, April 21, 2014

The Google Doodle celebrating Charlotte Bronte's 198th Birthday



Google has celebrated the life of the English author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, with a Google doodle.

Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the third of six children. Her younger sister, Emily Brontë, wrote Wuthering Heights.

The Brontës' father was an Irish clergyman who changed his name to Brontë from Brunty or Prunty. He sent his daughters to the Clergy Daughters' school in Lancashire where conditions were so bad that it led to the deaths of Charlotte's elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. The school was the inspiration for Lowood School in Jane Eyre. The remaining daughters were taken out of school but with their health damaged.

In 1847, Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of Jane, who falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. The couple marry after Mrs Rochester dies in a house fire.

In 1854 Charlotte, expecting a child, caught pneumonia. It was an illness which could have been cured, but she seems to have seized upon it (consciously or unconsciously) as an opportunity of ending her life, and after a lengthy and painful illness, she died, probably of dehydration.

1857 saw the postumous publication of The Professor, which had been written in 1845-46, and in that same year Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë was published.


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