Thomas John Winnifrith, respected Brontë biographer, scholar, historian, editor, and literary critic, was born 5 April 1938 in London to John Digby Winnifrith and Lesbia Margaret Cochrane Winnifrith. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and became assistant master at Eton College in 1961. At Eton he taught Latin and Greek as well as English and Divinity. "It was perhaps Divinity teaching that first drew me to the Brontës with their strongly religious background and the religious imagery that pervades their novels," Winnifrith has remarked in an unpublished letter. He was E. K. Chambers Student at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1966 to 1968, receiving a master of philosophy degree in 1968. From 1968 until 1970 Winnifrith was William Noble Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where he earned a doctorate in 1970. The Brontës were one of his subjects for the M.Phil. at Oxford and his main subject for the...