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Article: How Bronte sisters' novels gradually gained respect.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- January 28, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Charles Matthews
``The Bronte Myth'' by Lucasta Miller; Knopf ($26.95)
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You probably think of "Jane Eyre" as the kind of novel you'd feel safe in recommending to a 12-year-old girl (if you know a 12-year-old girl who'd read a novel about a Victorian governess instead of the latest dish about Paris Hilton).
But as the British critic Lucasta Miller tells us in her provocative history of the reputation of the Bronte sisters and their work, when Charlotte Bronte's novel was published in 1847, readers were shocked, shocked by it (which means, naturally, that it sold a lot of copies). It was vilified with those curious Victorian ...