The most tragic story Charlotte never told was her own, says the catchline on the cover. Yorkshire journalist Sarah Freeman seeks to set that right, by lifting the lid on the real Charlotte Bronte.

When Charlotte died in 1855, her friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a biography of her that sought to tell the world what a gifted writer it had lost.

And so the book did. But, according to Freeman, it also, in true Victorian style, sought to suppress details of Charlotte’s love life, portraying her in an idealised way as the poor, repressed daughter of a cleric.

Anyone who has read Jane Eyre must know, however, that the author was a passionate, unconventional woman, not the insipid prude the Victorians would have you believe.

As a teenager at Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte penned a series of torrid romances. But she believed that only true love could conquer all – and by the time she was 23 had rejected two proposals of marriage from men she didn’t love.

Over the next fifteen years, Freeman says, she had two passionate affairs – one with a married father of six. Eventually, in her late 30s, her childhood dreams of finding true love finally abandoned, she walked into her father’s church and married a man she didn’t love.

Arthur Nicholls wasn’t dashing or handsome – but he cared about Charlotte. She began to realise that perhaps companionship was what she’d needed all along. Then tragedy struck. Within nine months of her marriage both Charlotte and her unborn child were dead.

The book is written in a slightly breathless, women’s magazine style. But any lovers of the Bronte sisters will find it gripping nonetheless for the glimpses it offers of the real Charlotte Bronte.