ROBERT BERNARD

First published in 1966, Robert Bernard Martins The Accents of Persuasion is a consummate critical study of Charlotte Brontes 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 Bronte attempted to speak the language of conviction in the accents of persuasion. (Robert Bernard Martin, from his Introduction.)

The common perception of Britains Victorian era as one of strict and strait-laced conformity has long been subject to rebuttal, and Robert Bernard Martins Enter Rumour (1962) was an early and distinguished endeavour in this line. Herein Martin weighs the evidence of four scandalous incidents that aroused great public interest during the first dozen years of Victorias reign, each of them emanating from what the Victorians might have called the higher orders of society. Martin recounts the sorry tale of Lady Flora Hastings, victim of Court gossip; Lord Eglinton, who tried and failed to revive the medieval tournament; the strange case of the St Cross Hospital Charity; and George Hudson, Railway King, whose rise and fall remains a story for our times.Martin examines sources expertly and further explores how three of these scandals were transformed into fiction - by none less than Dickens, Disraeli and Trollope.