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Bombay to Bloomsbury: A Biography of the Strachey Family (review)

AUTUMN 2005 reference to Jane Eyre (1847) or Agnes Grey (1847), bypassing salient cultural issues in favor of factual information. This entry does not highlight governesses’ liminal class status, surely one of the most critical sources of Charlotte’s discomfort and the narrative tension of Jane Eyre. Perhaps it is unfair to expect what is essentially an encyclopedia to delve into interpretive cultural contexts, but these two subjects, at least, are so widely discussed that they almost qualify as common knowledge, and their absence is conspicuous. In a project of this scope it is always possible to identify a few problems or gaps. Occasionally the placement of information is confusing: the discussion of Charlotte’s painful attachment to Constantin Heger occurs in the entry on his wife. There is no entry on tuberculosis, which is treated in a short paragraph under “Health and Medicine.” The treatment of modern schools of criticism, such as feminism or Marxism, is not necessarily concerned with the most recent scholarship, though the entry on postcolonial criticism is more up to date, as it would have to be. Nevertheless, providing an exhaustive view of modern scholarship is obviously beyond the goals of this volume. Readers can use the information provided here to pick up a quick education in the main themes of, say, psychoanalytic criticism, which can orient them as they research more recent scholarship. Although at $90 this volume is more a library reference work than a personal resource, it would be a worthwhile investment for the devoted Brontë scholar. Overall, The Oxford Companion to the Brontës admirably fulfills its ambition to provide a comprehensive guide to authors whose lives and works inspire inexhaustible interest. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman University of Kentucky