Who would have guessed that Charlotte and Emily Bronte, the motherless daughters of a country curate, would someday be regarded as two of the best writers in the English language? They lived quiet lives far from sophisticated urban society, never received formal college degrees, and, to make matters worse--they were middle-class women living in nineteenth- century England. What made the sisters remarkable was their ability to turn every disadvantage to an advantage. They spent days at home reading the classics of English literature, making up their own stories, or roaming over the wild moors. They keenly observed the friends they met at various schools, and vividly remembered the horrors and traumas they experienced there. Finally, sometimes subtly, sometimes passionately--they expressed their repressed emotions in prose and poetry, through female and male voices. As a result, when their works were finally published, Charlotte and Emily Bronte sent English literature...