Author: Claire Harman

Claire Harman is an award-winning British biographer, critic, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her subjects include Sylvia Townsend Warner, Fanny Burney, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen’s literary reputation, and Charlotte Brontë. In Charlotte Brontë, Harman uses the novelist’s letters and the Brontë family record to connect a secluded Yorkshire upbringing with the ambition, craft, and independence behind Jane Eyre and the family’s other writing. Penguin publishes the British edition as Charlotte Brontë: A Life, while Vintage uses Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart in the United States. Harman’s account places Charlotte’s work beside her responsibilities at home, her role in encouraging her sisters’ publication, and her response to sudden literary recognition. The biography was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and its edition history reflects the same study under two market-specific subtitles.