Charlotte Brontë, Embodiment and the Material World

'This is a wonderful collection which explores issues of materiality and embodiment across a fascinating range of areas. Drawing on the expertise of museum professionals and historians of the book as well as that of literary critics, it offers new insights into Brontë’s modes of composition and the forms of physicality in her fiction. It also answers questions you never thought to ask: how did those moccasins end up in West Yorkshire?'

–Sally Shuttleworth, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, UK, and author of Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology. 

Comprising nine original essays by specialists in material culture, book history,

literary criticism, and curatorial and archival studies, this co-edited volume


addresses a wide range of Brontë’s writing—from vignettes composed during her


teenage years (“The Tea Party” and “The Secret”) to completed novels (The

Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette) and unfinished works (“Ashworth” and


“Emma”). In bringing to life the surprising array of embodied experiences that


shaped Brontë’s creative practice (from writing to book-making, painting, and

drawing), Charlotte Brontë, Embodiment and the Material World forges new

connections between historical, material, and textual approaches to the author’s

work.