In 1826 her father returned home with a box of toy soldiers for Branwell. Following the tragedy, their father withdrew his daughters from the school.Īt home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children - Branwell, Emily, and Anne - continued their ad-hoc education. Her experiences at the school deeply affected Brontë - her health never recovered and she immortalised the cruel and brutal treatment in her novel, Jane Eyre. Seven pupils died in a typhus epidemic that swept the school and all four of the Brontë girls became very ill - Maria and Elizabeth dying of tuberculosis in 1825. The school was unheated and the pupils slept two to a bed for warmth. They were regularly deprived of food, beaten by teachers and humiliated for the slightest error. The school was a horrific experience for the girls and conditions were appalling. In August 1824 Charlotte, along with her sisters Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, was sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, a new school for the daughters of poor clergyman (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). Maria Branwell Brontë died from what was thought to be cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters and a son to the care of her spinster sister Elizabeth Branwell, who moved to Yorkshire to help the family. This is where the Brontë children would spend most of their lives. In April 1820 the family moved a few miles to Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors, where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate. See also Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë.Ĭharlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England, the third of six children, to Patrick Brontë (formerly 'Patrick Brunty'), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell. Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist, the eldest out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontÃ«