Such sad lives were led by the the Bronte's, loneliness, loss, despair, all were experienced and fed into the imaginations on charlotte, emily and anne. This book is a brilliant book by E C Gaskell (who i normally dont really like), it is basically a collection of letters by charlotte and a great narrative, when speaking of the deaths of emily, anne and charlotte, i actually felt tears in my eyes!

Mrs. Gaskell understood a man's or woman's life to be lived within a social and natural context -- and her deployment of anecdotes and impressions of the North of England in the early pages of this book is captivating. But she also understood us to be souls, present to but distinct from God. Hence, even though in a few instances Gaskell's facts may been correctible (which the editor has done for us in this Penguin Classics edition), she is concerned with truth, and this gives readers the opportunity (rarely offered by modern entertainments) to escape from the trivial.

A very nicely written biography by Mrs. Gaskell about the life of her friend Charlotte Bronte, although most of the content was made up of letters written either by or to Charlotte Bronte rather than Mrs. Gaskell's own writings. Still this is a very concise book containing mostly everything that an ordinary reader, or well, a beginner of the Bronte novels, should know about this famous family. Nonetheless at some point of the book, I do find Mrs. Gaskell a bit too subjective, especially when it comes to the depiction of Charlotte's brother Branwell Bronte and his downfall. But consider the fact that this book was written only within one and a half year, with Mrs. Gaskell herself alone traveling all the way from Manchester to Haworth, and then to Brussel, doing all the necessary researches and interviews on her own, I must say that this is just an awesome piece of work!! And just as what Patrick Bronte himself had said about this biography, 'It is every way worthy of what one Great Woman, should have written of Another...it ought to stand, and will stand in the first rank, of Biographies, till the end of time'.

One more word though. From a more scholarly point of view, however, I think so far the 'best' biography on the Brontes should be Juliet Barker's 'The Brontes'. If, after reading this biography written by Mrs. Gaskell, you still want to know more about the Brontes, then I will say: go and buy this other book by Juliet Barker and you definitely will never regret it!

"Miss Marjoribanks" is set up in a mock epic style following the social conquering of Carlingford by Lucilla Marjoribanks when returns to her hometown after years in school and on the Grand Tour. The omniscent narrator sets the epic tone, and this more than the plot or character development carries the story along. Lucilla's work to bring order to the chaos of Carlingford social life causes her mostly success with a few small failures thrown in, but she doesn't seem to ever grow in awareness as do the heroines of Jane Austen's or Anthony Trollope's novels. This lack of character development and absence of a strong plot made this novel less satisfying than those of Trollope, Austen, Fielding and the like. But the narration is amusing and makes the book readable and moderately enjoyable.

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. I came to love the character of Miss Lucilla Marjoribanks. She's a little over the top, and Oliphant has fun with Lucilla's extensive charm and "strength of mind". I found myself laughing as Lucilla shaped society in her town. The book is a fun and easy read...definitely recommended.

This must be one of the funniest books I've ever read--I hadn't laughed out loud like this since Catch-22. The character of Miss Marjoribanks (that's pronounced "Marchbanks") is used by Oliphant both as a vehicle for social satire in the Victorian community and as an instrument to examine female modes of power in the Victorian home. The scene in which Miss Marjoribanks figuratively usurps her father's role as patriarch of the house by appropriating his place at the breakfast table is hilarious. Oliphant's book is wonderfully enjoyable and furtively serious--it may be light in tone, but it reveals a great deal about how a resourceful Victorian woman might seek modes and expressions of power within parameters that are very limiting.

The main character of Miss Marjoribanks is not intended to "grow" or "develop"--part of the pleasure of her characterization and her story is in witnessing how her single-minded mania as social director of her community compells her to overcome the obstacles thrown in her way by the novel's narrative. Why should we arbitrarily expose this book to aesthetic standards created by a handful of canonical novels? Miss Marjoribanks's characterization is as valid as any found in Austen or Trollope (though not necessarily as great as the best of them)--we must keep in mind that there was much more to Victorian fiction than what is revealed in the small quantity of canonized examples still read today. Oliphant was immensely popular in her day, she was Queen Victoria's favorite writer, and there were many contemporary critics who considered her to be one of the best novelists of that period.

In short, Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks is a comic masterpiece, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to any reader of 19th-century British fiction.