Charlotte was the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who wrote… and in many ways a dominant figure in the family. She was born in Yorkshire in 1816, to Patrick Bronte an Irish man and Maria Branwell, who was from Cornwall. In her early childhood her mother died - by then Patrick had moved to Haworth, in Yorkshire where he was perpetual curate.
She with her sisters went to a school where the girls were ill treated and half starved, and her older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died. Patrick brought her and Emily home, and she helped to teach her younger sisters.
In 1831 she went to school again, to Miss Wooler's school where she was quite happy, and she studied hard, needing to educate herself so that she could become a governess. She made 2 good friends at the school, Ellen Nussey who was a quiet conventional ladylike girl and Mary Taylor who was a much more interesting radical minded girl who was later to go to New Zealand. Charlotte was the only Bronte girl to make any friends at school. Anne rarely made friends outside the family and Emily positively refused to socialise with anyone but her sisters.
After completing her education Charlotte took a job as a teacher at Miss Woolers’s school, but she didn’t enjoy being a teacher. Her passion was for writing and she missed her home at Haworth
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