Dickens and the Brontës

Abstract Charlotte Brontië's attitude to Dickens, always ambiguous, crystallized in the months when Vanity Fair began publication, and resulted in her enthusiastic dedication of the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray. She was responding to a swing in critical, but not public, opinion that rejected Dicken's joyful social inclusiveness and puffed Thackeray as representing a less radical social outlook and a more gentlemanly viewpoint and tone. Text of the Annual Brontë Lecture given at Haworth in June 2000.