He thrilled readers the world over with breathtaking tales of pirates (Treasure Island) and monsters (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). But the short life of writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) was as adventurous as almost anything in his fiction. He was both engineer and aesthete, Covenanter and atheist, dutiful son and reckless lover. His travels, illnesses, creative struggles, volatile relationships, and titanic quarrels were the stuff of legend.

Until now, no biography has done justice to the complex, brilliant, and troubled man who was...

Charlotte Bronte famously lived her entire life in an isolated parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and with siblings whose astonishing creativity was a closely held secret. The genius of Claire Harman's biography is that it transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to quiet rebellion and fierce ambition. Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte's inner life with absorbing intensity. Bronte's blazingly intelligent female characters brimming with hidden passions transformed English...