Patrick Bronte (1777-1861) was the father of the famous Bronte Sisters; Anne, Charlotte and Emily, three of Victorian England's greatest novelists, but he was a fascinating man in his own right and not nearly such an unsympathetic character as Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte would have us believe.Born into poverty in Ireland, he won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained into the Church of England. He was perpetual cur...

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain’s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life‘Powerful and remarkable. It is a celebration of a great genius. No question: you put Tomalin’s book down knowing that you have met a living author’ Miriam Margolyes, The Times‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic accou...

Discover the extraordinary diaries of the real Anne Lister: the inspiration for Gentleman Jack and Emma Donoghue's new novel Learned By Heart'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing' SARAH WATERS'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSON'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of les...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Charles Dickens remains – 200 years after his birth – arguably Britain’s most successful writer. Works such as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist have amused and inspired readers in all languages since their original publication in the nineteenth century, and have been adapted countless times for the stage and screen.Dickens: History in an Hour covers all the major facts and events surrounding Dickens’s life; the povert...

Antonia Fraser's bestselling account of the lives of women in seventeenth-century England.Just how weak were the women of the Civil War era? What could they expect beyond marriage and childbirth in an age where infant and maternal mortality was frequent and contraception unknown? Did anyone marry for love? Could a woman divorce? What rights had the unmarried? What expectations the widows?An expert on the period, Antonia Fraser brings to life the many and va...

The cases covered here record the county's most fascinating but least-known crimes, as well as famous murders that gripped not just Cambridgeshire but the whole nation. From the mysterious barn fire at Burwell that killed seventy-six people to the unsolved murder of Cambridge shopkeeper Alice Lawton, and from poisoning in St Neots to the murder of a fifteen-year-old drummer boy whose ghost haunted the killer and drove him to confess, this is a collection of the county's mo...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Miss du Maurier has brought to the art of the biography the narrative urgency' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW' . . . she is unravelling a long distorted mystery' KIRKUS REVIEWSPursued by the twin demons of drink and madness, Branwell Bronte created a private world that was i...

At a time when there were almost no career openings for women a group of intrepid and gifted females scaled the heights of what was literally a man's world - they became bawds. Mother Clap - women bawds were often known as Mother - ran male brothels, or Molly Houses. Elizabeth Holland had an immense moated mansion built on Bankside and for thirty years entertained the aristocracy, including royalty. When troops attempted to stop her trade and eject her from the house, she ...

Serial poisoners, crimes of passion, brutal slayings and infanticide; this new book examines the stories and subsequent trials behind the most infamous cases of British female killers between the early part of the nineteenth century and the 1950s. Among the cases featured here is that of Sarah Dazley, hanged in 1843 for poisoning her second husband; Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered up to twenty-one people, including many members of her own family; Amelia Dyer, the 'baby farme...

Winner of the Portico PrizeShortlisted for the Whitbread Biography of the YearHigh-spirited, witty and passionate, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote some of the most enduring novels of the Victorian age, including Mary Barton, North and South and Wives and Daughters. This biography traces Elizabeth's youth in rural Knutsford, her married years in the tension-ridden city of Manchester and her wide network of friends in London, Europe ...

This fascinating volume explores all aspects of life in that dread institution, the workhouse. From the staff who lived and worked here to the lunatics who were kept - sometimes unsuccessfully - in the medical wing, the babies and mothers whose lives began - and sometimes ended - in the maternity ward, and the tramps, families and destitute persons who passed through the doors every day, it reveals a side of Rotherham that has long since been forgotten. This book also cont...