Charlotte Brontë, who dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital and richly-drawn characters, spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love. She eventually found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. After marrying, the pair honeymooned in Ireland – a glimmer of happiness in a life shadowed by tragedy. 

That moment of joy was destined to be short-lived however, as Brontë died just nine months into their marriage. Her genius, and the aura of mystery surrounding her, meant she’d been mythologised even within her own lifetime – a process which only intensified after her death. Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls – who encountered Charlotte on that fateful journey to Ireland, and who went on to wed her widower Arthur – Charlotte is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined. Bound by passion and obsession, friendship and loss, loyalty and deception – this a story of Brontë’s short but pivotal time in Ireland as never before told. 

Martina Devlin’s enthralling new novel Charlotte weaves back and forth through Charlotte’s life, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her, those who thought they knew her, and those who longed to know her. Above all, this is a story of fiction: who creates it, who lives it, who owns it.