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The Brontes of Haworth: Yorkshire's Literary Giants - Their Lives, Works, Influences and Inspirations

by David W. Harrison

330 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0622; ISBN 1-55369-809-6; US$27.00, C$30.58, EUR22.00, £15.50

This English literary text on the Brontes will be of value to teachers, students and Bronte enthusiasts.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book The Brontës of Haworth: Yorkshire's Literary Giants - Their Lives, Works, Influences and Inspirations has been designed by a retired teacher of English as a general, overall guide and reference for use by highschool teachers, college and university professors, students and Brontë enthusiasts The functional layout of the book in three parts allows readers and researchers to obtain a quick, thumbnail sketch of the lives of each of the Brontës, each of their seven major adult works, and the various influence and inspirations which affected their short, tragic lives and led them into careers in writing. Each chapter in each section has been designed so that the brief background sketches of their lives and works can be read as an entity in itself, and from there, readers can choose which area they would like to pursue further through additional studies and research. The amount of research material on the Brontës is overwhelming, and it was the author's intention to briefly sort out various areas of potential interest for those just being introduced to this great family of English writers.

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About the Author David W. Harrison was born and raised in the south central town of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Completing his high school education there, he immediately entered Manitoba Teacher's College in Winnipeg where he graduated in June, 1963, with a Ceritificate in Education and began teaching in Thompson, Manitoba in the fall. In September, 1965, the author returned to university and graduated with a BA at the University of Manitoba. After spending some time working short-term for the Federal Government and a brief stint in the Armed Forces, he returned to university and graduated with a B.Ed degree in 1969. For the next ten years he taught high school geography with the James-Assiniboia School District in Manitoba. In 1979, Mr. Harrison and his young family moved to Penticton, B.C. and one year later he moved to Prince George, B.C. where he taught junior high school English for the next nineteen years. After his retirement in June, 1999, he continued on a research project which he buan in July 1993, after a short, but intriguing visit to the Bront&eulm; Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire. At the same time, the author completed a third university degree (PBCE, 2001), and then continued full-time efforts on the completion of this informative, background text. At present, he is working on three, other partly-finished manuscripts, and in addition to these has several more works on individual Brontës planned for the future.

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Excerpts

Introduction

The lives of the Brontës is an interesting but tragic story. From the very outset, their lives took on a series of tragedies which plagued them almost from the moment they first set foot in Haworth, Yorkshire in April, 1820. Months before, in February of that year, Rev. Brontë was appointed the curacy and 'living' at Haworth while the family still lived happily at Thornton, near Bradford, some twenty miles away. While in Thornton, the family was at its height of happiness. Their family of six children (Anne had just been born in January) was in full bloom, and everyone was prosperous and healthy. The preceding five years there had undoubtedly been the happiest of their lives, and four of their children, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne had all been born there. Maria and Elizabeth, their two, eldest daughters had been born earlier in 1814, and 1815, respectively, in their first home, Clough House, at Hartshead-cum-Clifton. But with the birth of Anne in January of 1820, and the appointment of Rev. Brontë to Haworth, their happy times were soon to come to an end.

The Brontë family arrived in Haworth in April, 1820, with seven ox-cart loads of furniture and household belongings which in itself must have been a spectacle and topic of conversation for the local villagers. Soon after their arrival and instalment into the Parsonage, Mrs. Brontë's health declined, and it had not improved since the birth of Anne in January. Throughout the summer and fall, the situation became even more critical and by January, 1821, Rev. Brontë expressed in a letter to a friend that his wife was critically ill, and he did not hold out much hope for her survival. In fact, it is believed that she had stomach cancer, and eight months later in September, 1821, she died. Their six small children were left without a mother, but this was simply the first of many tragedies to befall them.

Mrs. Brontë's sister Elizabeth, whom the Brontës called, Aunt Branwell, came to Haworth to provide interim assistance to Rev. Brontë and his six children. Both Maria and Elizabeth Branwell had come from a fine family which lived in the warm, southern coastal town of Penzance, Cornwall, and Aunt Branwell had no special liking for Haworth or North England, nor did she intend to stay. When the Reverend was unable to find a new wife, Aunt Branwell, out of Christian charity and duty, decided to stay and help raise her sister's children. She was a spinster of forty-four years when she arrived, and although she always dreamed of returning to Cornwall, there she would remain until her death, at age sixty-six, in October, 1842.

After Mrs. Brontë's death, life became 'settled' once again until 1824, when again a new, double-tragedy was set into motion. Rev. Brontë was determined to see that his children were properly educated, and when the Clergy Daughters' School, a 'benefit' school with subsidized fees, opened at Cowan Bridge, Mr. Brontë saw this as a Godsend, and immediately enrolled four of his daughters as money became available and the children overcame childhood diseases. Maria and Elizabeth were enrolled in July, 1824, Charlotte in August, and Emily in November. The school practised an austere lifestyle, and living conditions there were extremely poor and far too harsh for young children. By early spring of 1825, both Maria and Elizabeth were withdrawn because of serious illness, and both later died of consumption in May and June, respectively; Charlotte and Emily were immediately withdrawn for their own safety by their father, and this probably saved their lives.

In his emerging years, young Branwell had become a highly indulged child; he was the only boy in a large family of girls, he was the idol of his father, and a favourite of Aunt Branwell. With the death of his two, eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, he appeared to have some emotional problems in childhood which later manifested themselves into adult problems of a much more serious nature. As a result, his life was filled with a series of bitter failures; he regressed into drinking and drugs, and his life came to an abrupt end, at age thirty-one, in September of 1848.

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, on the other hand, developed into one of England's most legendary, literary families which has gone down in the history of English Literature. But each of their life's journey was not without its 'bumps' in the road, and their literary efforts, fame, and fortune were perhaps the results of some of their failed efforts. Anne Brontë was the youngest but the first of the family to seek employment as a governess. Her first attempt was brief and unsuccessful and the second much longer and more successful, but still it was neither satisfying nor gratifying. Charlotte followed quickly with two different jobs as a governess with very similar results. In the interim, Emily held a teaching position at Law Hill, Halifax, and remained there for approximately six months, but one day she left abruptly.

The conclusion they arrived at from their failed and sometimes successful, but miserable, positions as teachers was to begin a school of their own. They followed this dream for several years, and after much planning, consideration, and Charlotte's and Emily's efforts on the Continent to better themselves and obtain their diplomas in areas of music, languages, and fine arts, they were ready. Their final plans were made, their curriculum was set, and advertisements were placed, but no one came. As disappointing as it must have been for them, it could not have been more fortunate for the world of literature, for it now left them with time for contemplation and writing. Today we reap the benefits of those early failures, since no finer family of writers has perhaps ever existed in the English-speaking world.

While Charlotte and Emily were on the Continent, and Anne was a governess at Thorp Green Hall, the Brontës were hit by another set of tragedies with three, sudden and unexpected deaths in the fall of 1842. In early September of that year, William Weightman, their father's curate, and favourite of the entire family, died suddenly of cholera. Early in October, Martha Taylor, a family friend and younger sister of Mary Taylor, Charlotte's close friend, also died of cholera while studying in Brussels, a short distance away from where Charlotte and Emily were boarding. Later in the same month, their beloved Aunt Branwell, who had been their 'mother' and mentor, died unexpectedly after a brief illness following twenty-one years of devoted service to Rev. Brontë and his six children.

After their first disappointing attempt at publishing their works, Poems, 1846, their literary fortunes took a dramatic turn for the better with Charlotte's, Jane Eyre, immediately followed by Emily's, Wuthering Heights, and Anne's, Agnes Grey. The London literari were taken aback, and by 'storm', by three, unknown, and mysterious writers by the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell from the North of England. Their books were instant successes, but in addition to these 'blockbuster' hits, was the added mystery which surrounded their identities which became the talk of fashionable London. Speculation ran rampant until July, 1848, when Charlotte and Anne went to London to clear up the mystery of the 'three Bells' to Charlotte's publisher, Smith, Elder & Company.

Emily never wrote again, for the general public that is, but Anne came out with her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, one year later in June, 1848. These were the last of Emily's and Anne's writings since the fourth set of tragedies was about to befall them in rapid succession. Branwell's condition seriously eroded in the fall of 1848, and he died suddenly on September 24, 1848. At his funeral, a cold and wet day, Emily caught a cold and never left the house again only to die there three months later on December 19, 1848. And by this time, Anne was ill with consumption as well, and declining quickly. In only five months time, at the end of May, 1849, Anne, too, was dead; the tragic deaths of the three Brontës took only eight, short months. Now, Charlotte was alone in the world with her father, the aging and partially blind Rev. Brontë.

In October, 1849, five months after Anne's death, Charlotte's publisher released her second novel, Shirley, which received far less acclaim, and more critical reviews, than Jane Eyre. And from that point on, Charlotte, without any siblings with whom to confer, suffered from loneliness, despair, and deep depression from these traumatic losses. Her desire to write was thereafter considerably blunted, and she found difficulty completing any new efforts. Her next and final novel, Villette, was not finished and published until four years later in 1853. In the years from 1852 to 1854, Charlotte was seriously courted by her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, whom she later married in 1854. Her happy, married life was brief, and on March 31, 1855, Charlotte died, at the age of thirty-eight years, in the early stages of pregnancy after only nine months of wedded bliss. She was just three weeks short of her thirty-ninth birthday.

In the last years of her life, Charlotte began another novel, Emma, which was never completed, and two years after her death, in 1857, her first, failed novel, The Professor, was published posthumously by Smith, Elder & Co., but more as a 'courtesy' to this renowned author taken in her prime than anything else. And so ended the brief and tragic lives of the Brontë sisters, three literary giants of Yorkshire, who have left such a lasting legacy not only for English Literature and the English-speaking world but also to the world at large. In 1861, Rev. Brontë died in early June without any heirs or grandchildren, and so the direct line of Reverend Patrick Brontë, and Maria Branwell of Cornwall, came to an end.

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Catalogue Information

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