Mrs Gaskell did not know Charlotte Bronte well personally - few people ever Aid, in fact - and she only wrote her biography under personal pressure from the Bronte's clergy man father, Patrick. The bereaved husband, the Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls, did not want it but was overborne by his domineering father-in-law, who had been stung by the many and ignorant attacks on his daughters' writings and even on their moral characters. Mrs Gaskell was already an established novelist and was herself the wife of a (Unitarian) clergyman, so she seemed an ideal candidate. In practice she found it a heavy task, complicated by inhibitions, pressures and virtual censorship of all kinds, and revised and corrected the book shortly after its first publication in 1857. Judged by the standard of the modern, tell-it-all school of biography it seems relatively tame and idealised, but Mrs Gaskell used many primary sources and unlike her successors, she did meet her remarkable subject face to face.