A leading literary expert has dropped a bombshell with new claims about Charlotte Bronte's love life.

Brian Wilks disputes the commonly-held view that she married Arthur Bell Nicholls out of pity. In his latest book, called Charlotte In Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Bronte, he says the impression given by her letters is misleading.

The claims are set to cause a stir in Bronte circles when the book is published next month.

Mr Wilks, who lives in Leeds, said: "The only evidence we have is Charlotte's letters. What I did was to take those letters about the courtship with a pinch of salt."

Mike Hill, director of the Parsonage Museum in Haworth, said today: "I'm sure it will cause a stir. Anything that attempts to give a new way of looking at any of the Brontes is bound to have ripples and in a small way perhaps it will be controversial. At the same time I don't think anyone will be coming to blows over it."

Most Bronte scholars have accepted the version of events that characterised Charlotte's marriage to Nicholls, a former curate of Haworth, as reluctant.

But Mr Wilks, who is one of the vice-presidents of the Bronte Society, says many of her letters, which gave the impression that she married out of pity, had deliberately disguised her true feelings.

Barbara Whitehead, who owns the Bronte Birthplace in Thornton, said she had not read Mr Wilks' book but was sceptical if it did not contain any new hard facts.

"It's true that the only evidence we have is from her letters because I don't think Arthur Bell Nicholls ever wrote anything about it. But unless Mr Wilks has got hold of something else concrete, I don't see that this is anything more than a theory," she said.

But Mr Hill said: "It's an interesting hypothesis. I think what Brian is saying is that if you are having an intense emotional experience, you wouldn't necessarily tell the guy at the next desk about it. You would gloss over it a bit and that could be what happened with Charlotte."

Charlotte In Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Bronte is published by Michael O'Mara Books at £20 in hardback on October 9. See Saturday's Telegraph & Argus for an interview with Brian Wilks.

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