SZTE Klebelsberg Könyvtár
In Grant’s earlier book, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. A Critical Study (AU Press, 2014), he followed a practical-critical analysis of the letters that dealt with key patterns of metaphors and concepts. This volume is a complement to the first book and provides an effective, theory-based reading of the letters that brings them more fully and successfully into the domain of modern literary studies.
These letters give an insight into the life of a writer whose novels continue to be bestsellers. They reveal much about Charlotte Brontë’s personal life, her family relationships, and the society in which she lived. Many of her early letters are written with vigour, vivacity, and an engaging aptitude for self-mockery. In contrast, her letters to her’master’, the Belgian schoolteacher Constantin Heger, reveal her intense, obsessive longing for some response from him. Other letters are deeply moving, when Charlotte endures the agony of her brother’s and sisters’untimely deaths. We learn also of the progress of her writing, including the astonishing success of Jane Eyre, and of her contacts with her publishers, including the young George Smith; and we recognize in her letters the life-experiences which are transmuted into the art of her novels.
When Johan Furuhjelm was offered the governorship of Russian America in 1858, the 37-year-old Finnish officer found himself in a quandary. He needed a wife to support him in the new post, with its mix of mercantile and administrative responsibilities, and there were no suitable candidates in the remote Siberian port where he was harbourmaster. Fortunately, on his trip back west to receive his orders, Helsinki society came to his aid, choosing for him a young woman of good family and international background, Anna von Schoultz.