The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1, by
Elizabeth Gaskell

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Title: The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

Release Date: April 12, 2005 [eBook #1827]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE -
VOLUME 1***

Transcribed from the 1906 Smith, Elder, and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE--VOLUME 1

CHAPTER I

The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire; a
slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe.
Keighley station is on this line of railway, about a quarter of a mile
from the town of the same name. The number of inhabitants and the
importance of Keighley have been very greatly increased during the last
twenty years, owing to the rapidly extended market for worsted
manufactures, a branch of industry that mainly employs the factory
population of this part of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre
and metropolis.

Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-fashioned
village, into a still more populous and flourishing town. It is evident
to the stranger, that as the gable-ended houses, which obtrude themselves
corner-wise on the widening street, fall vacant, they are pulled down to
allow of greater space for traffic, and a more modern style of
architecture. The quaint and narrow shop-windows of fifty years ago, are
giving way to large panes and plate-glass. Nearly every dwelling seems
devoted to some branch of commerce. In passing hastily through the town,
one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyer and doctor can live, so
little appearance is there of any dwellings of the professional middle-
class, such as abound in our old cathedral towns. In fact, nothing can
be more opposed than the state of society, the modes of thinking, the
standards of reference on all points of morality, manners, and even
politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in
the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the
south.