Upon hearing of the death of her friend Charlotte Brontë on 31 March 1855, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell wrote, "I loved her dearly, more than I think she knew. I shall never cease to be thankful that I knew her; or to mourn her loss." It was out of this love and respect for Brontë that Gaskell consented to the Reverend Patrick Brontë's proposal to write a biography of his daughter. In her two-volume The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) Gaskell hoped, she said, to give "a right understanding of the life of [her] dear friend" to that "solemn public who know ... how to admire ... genius, and how to reverence ... virtue." The Life of Charlotte Brontë remains unparalleled for its intimate, moving, and authentic telling of Brontë's life story. It was Gaskell's only biography, and it has the distinction of being the only biography...