3
(Athenæum.)
"The story of a woman's life, unfolded in this book, is calculated to make the old feel young, and the young old... By all this book will be read with interest Mrs. Gaskell has produced one of the best biographies of a woman by a woman which we can recall to mind."
(Daily News.)
"Thoroughly well and artistically has the work been accomplished; an informing method presides over the whole; there is no feebleness or redunancy; every circumstance has a direct bearing on the main object of painting, vigorously and accurately, a real picture of the woman as she was."
(Spectator.)
"The profound pathos, the tragic interest, of this book lies in the terrible struggle that life was to a woman endowed with Charlotte Bronte's conscientiousness, affection for her family, and literary ambition, and continually curbed and thrown back by physical wretchedness. Its moral is, the unconquerable strength of genius and goodness."
(Globe.)
"Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Bronte' has placed her on a level with the best biographers of any country. It is a truthful and beautiful work. ... No one can read it without feeling strengthened and purified."
(Saturday Review.)
"If any one wishes to see how a woman possessed of the highest intellectual power can disregard every temptation which intellect throws in the way of women, how generously and nobly a human being can live under the pressure of accumulated misfortunes—the record is at hand in the 'Life of Charlotte Bronte.'"
(Economist.)
"We have before us the life of a truly great and noble woman, written by one who has sufficient moral sympathy to understand her character, and sufficient intellectual insight to appreciate her genius. Such a work cannot fail to be of the deepest interest; and it has a special interest for female readers."
