This is a pretty mammoth book, but you could expect little less from what is effectively a biography of five people, albeit a family - Patrick, Branwell, Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë. That it never once flags is a true testament to the skill of the author; this biography is eminently worthy of such a family of literary genius.

So much of what posterity has known of the Brontës has come down via Mrs Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, a laudable but inaccurate work that set in stone a great number of the myths and legends that have come to surround the family. Barker sets out to chisel through these myths and bring the real but flawed characters of the family to light, in particular the men of the family, Patrick, Branwell and Charlotte's husband Arthur Bell Nicholls, all of whom suffered particularly at the hands of Mrs Gaskell. That biography, whilst succeeding in its aim at establishing Charlotte and her sisters as geniuses, did so at the expense of the men in their lives, setting their achievements against a life of hardship and suffering.

This book spends more time on Charlotte than any of the other family members, but such a focus is understandable, given that Charlotte was the more lionized in her time, lived longer, had more of a desire for public and literary esteem, and bequeathed to history more of her letters, manuscripts and childhood writings. She doesn't come across as an entirely sympathetic figure, but Barker truly succeeds in capturing a vivid, vital and real personality. Anne and Emily are necessarily more shadowy, Branwell even more so.

One cannot help but finish this biography feeling that the Brontë family were cursed by their genius, cursed by possessing such vivid imaginations and passionate feelings in a place and time that did not value them and had little real outlet for them. One can only wonder how the sisters in particular would have fared in a later era.