Biography Take Courage

Samantha Ellis (Chatto & Windus; £16.99)

Samantha Ellis readily admits that, like all too many of us, she used to be guilty of dismissing anne Brontë as ‘boring. Gentle. Pious. meek. the “less talented Brontë” or “the third Beatle”’. her first book, How to be a Heroine, was sparked by an argument over whether Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw is a better role model; anne Brontë’s heroines agnes Grey and helen Graham don’t get so much as a mention.

her attitude changed, however, when she was shown anne’s last letter, written shortly before her death at the age of 29: ‘i get a shock… it’s like meeting a completely different woman… courageous… tough, and she wanted more life.’

intrigued, she decided to investigate. the result is a compelling study in which we encounter anne through the different people in her life, an approach that allows the author to focus on a variety of themes: from motherhood via maria, anne’s mother, to the moors—with their pleasures, dangers and folklore—via tabby, the housekeeper. that agnes and helen each get a chapter indicates miss Ellis’s delight in the power of literature and perhaps also shows how the endless mythologising of the Brontë sisters has made the real people seem almost as fictional as their creations.

the title comes from anne’s last words: ‘take courage, Charlotte, take courage.’ miss Ellis shows that anne’s relationship with her sisters was ‘bruising and complicated’, but points out that she has since ‘been rescued by a different sisterhood’—feminism, thanks to the radical power of her writing.

She reveals anne’s extraordinary courage in many aspects of her short life and, by embracing the necessary subjectivity that a biographer brings to her work, miss Ellis lets us accompany her on her own personal journey of discovery. Between the two of them, we readers can’t help but be inspired to ‘take courage’ ourselves. Emily Rhodes