First published in 1966, Robert Bernard Martin's The Accents of
Persuasion is a consummate critical study of Charlotte Brontë's
four novels: The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley
and Villette.
'The bare facts are so literally improbable as to tease one into
considering the lives of the Brontes themselves as some wild
metaphorical statement of the Romantic conception of the
world...Even the best of biography, however, may tend to serve
history rather than literature, and one may be forgiven for wishing
to return from their lives to the works of the sisters Bronte... The
following study, then, is an attempt to search out the themes that
occupied [Charlotte] Bronte in her novels and to demonstrate how
they are given artistic life; in short, to show how Charlotte Brontë
attempted to speak 'the language of conviction' in the 'accents of
persuasion'.' (Robert Bernard Martin, from his Introduction.)