Gaskell. It has held a position of singular popularity for forty
years; and while biography after biography has come and gone, it still
commands a place side by side with Boswell's _Johnson_ and Lockhart's
_Scott_. As far as mere readers are concerned, it may indeed claim its
hundreds as against the tens of intrinsically more important rivals.
There are obvious reasons for this success. Mrs. Gaskell was herself a
popular novelist, who commanded a very wide audience, and _Cranford_, at
least, has taken a place among the classics of our literature. She
brought to bear upon the biography of Charlotte Bronte all those literary
gifts which had made the charm of her seven volumes of romance. And
these gifts were employed upon a romance of real life, not less
fascinating than anything which imagination could have furnished.
Charlotte Bronte's success as an author turned the eyes of the world upon
her. Thackeray had sent her his _Vanity Fair_ before he knew her name or
sex. The precious volume lies before me--
[Picture: First Thackeray Inscription]
And Thackeray did not send many inscribed copies of his books even to
successful authors. Speculation concerning the author of _Jane Eyre_ was
sufficiently rife during those seven sad years of literary renown to make
a biography imperative when death came to Charlotte Bronte in 1855.
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