Revisioning the Brontë Myth and Producing the Prince of Publishing: Charlotte Brontë's Relationship with George Smith

Abstract

Charlotte Brontë's relationship with George Smith was complicated. The author and her publisher had a professional, intellectual and personal relationship characterized by force and influence on both sides, one not easily understood, vexed, sometimes entirely pragmatic, and strikingly human and contemporary in its unmythic character. The limitations of the Brontë Myth and also characters in the novel Villette — a novel in which Smith himself is said to appear — must not be overlooked and, rather, should be looked over to take in the unwieldy and undetermined expanse of this complex relationship.