Few people seeking to avoid the glare of publicity have had more of it turned on them than Charlotte Brontë's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Some critics have implied that he not only put a stop to her writing but might even have inadvertently caused her death.

Alan Adamson's biography takes recent scholarship into account and adds new material about Nicholl's family, education, and early life in Ireland to give a more balanced view. The book explores why Brontë, cool and often hostile towards Nicholls in the early days of his curacy at Haworth, came to respect and love him, and how Patrick Brontë, her difficult father, grew to rely on him after her death.

Drawing on Nicholl's correspondence with, among others, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ellen Nussey and Harriet Martineau, Mr Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls presents a compelling picture of Nicholls' efforts to emphasize Brontë's literary reputation and curtail speculation about her private life.