The Search After Happiness: Including Introductory Essays by G. K. Chesterton and Virginia Woolf

By Charlotte Brontë

“The Search After Happiness” is a 1829 novel by Charlotte Brontë. Written when the author was just thirteen years old, it is a disturbing tale of mysterious men and enslaving creatures that poses many questions but answers few. An uncanny insight into the mind of a young literary genius, “The Search After Happiness” is not to be missed by those who have read and enjoyed other works by this author. Charlotte Brontë (1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, and the oldest sister in the world-famous trio of literary sisters. Along with her sisters’, her novels have become irrefutable classics of English literature still read and enjoyed by people of all ages the world over. Other notable works by this author include: “Jane Eyre” (1847), “Shirley” (1849), and “Villette” (1853). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this classic volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a biography of the author by G. K. Chesterton, as well as essays by Virginia Woolf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classic Books Library
• Release date: Nov 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528782029

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë, born in 1816, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters, and one of the nineteenth century's greatest novelists. She is the author of Villette, The Professor, several collections of poetry, and Jane Eyre, one of English literature's most beloved classics. She died in 1855.

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THE SEARCH

AFTER HAPPINESS

By

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

TRANSCRIBED FROM

THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

1829

This edition published by Read Books Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Contents

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

HAWORTH

PREFACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER THE II

CHAPTER THE III

CHAPTER THE IV

CHAPTER THE V

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

Objection is often raised against realistic biography because it reveals so much that is important and even sacred about a man's life. The real objection to it will rather be found in the fact that it reveals about a man the precise points which are unimportant. It reveals and asserts and insists on exactly those things in a man's life of which the man himself is wholly unconscious; his exact class in society, the circumstances of his ancestry, the place of his present location. These are things which do not, properly speaking, ever arise before the human vision. They do not occur to a man's mind; it may be said, with almost equal truth, that they do not occur in a man's life. A man no more thinks about himself as the inhabitant of the third house in a row of Brixton villas than he thinks about himself as a strange animal with two legs. What a man's name was, what his income was, whom he married, where he lived, these are not sanctities; they are irrelevancies.

A very strong case of this is the case of the Brontës. The Brontë is in the position of the mad lady in a country village; her eccentricities form an endless source of innocent conversation to that exceedingly mild and bucolic circle, the literary world. The truly glorious gossips of literature, like Mr. Augustine Birrell and Mr. Andrew Lang, never tire of collecting all the glimpses and anecdotes and sermons and side-lights and sticks and straws which will go to make a Brontë museum. They are the most personally discussed of all Victorian authors, and the limelight of biography has left