Some Cool Books About the Brontes

~amy2 Sun, Aug 3, 1997 (19:56) seed

In case you want to venture beyond the novels & poems themselves, here are some cool books out there re: The Brontes: CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER FAMILY by Rebecca Fraser. A recent & well-researched bio of the whole family. Includes a recently unearthed photograph that in all probability is of Charlotte. THE BRONTES by Juliet Barker. 900 ppgs, so you really have to be committed! A -very- exhaustive bio of everyone, including Papa & Branwell, by the former curator of the Bronte Parsonage museum. I'm reading right now -- Bronte experts tell me it's well worth it. CHARLOTTE BRONTE, A PASSIONATE LIFE by Lyndall Gordon. A really superb psychological portrait of Charlotte. My fave so far. Makes ya think! THE LETTERS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, VO.L by Margaret Smith. The letters in the SHAKESPEARE HEAD BRONTE are not accurate -- they were compiled by a known forger, & if something was distasteful, he left it out. This is supposed to be the real deal - it's $96.00 U.S. from the Internet Bookstore on the web. http://www.bookshop.co.uk/ You can get the other books above from either: http://www.amazon.com/ or the new BARNES & NOBLE page on the net. The Bronte Parsonage also has a Web Page: http://www.virtual-pc.com/bpmweb/ They have a Shop where you can order books & other merchandise, but you have to do it by phone or catalog order. Happy hunting!!

~panache Thu, Aug 7, 1997 (11:08) #1

Can't recall the title exactly, but Daphne Dumaurier wrote something like THE INFERNAL WORLD OF BRANWELL BRONTE, which was interesting. I like Dumaurier's writing anyway, starting with REBECCA, FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, MY COUSIN RACHEL, etc.

~amy2 Thu, Aug 7, 1997 (11:32) #2

That's interesting -- I had never heard of that one. Another good one is BRONTE by Glyn Hughes. It's a '97 fictional bio of the whole family, & Hughes really seems to know his stuff!

~amy2 Wed, Aug 20, 1997 (00:25) #3

Here's another one I'm reading now: CHARLOTTE BRONTE, THE SELF CONCEIVED by Helene Moglen. Moglen appraoches bio through analysis of Charlotte's works, including the juvenalia. I like what she has to say -- she's more of a theorist than one of these straight "facticians", like Barker.

~rochelle Mon, Aug 25, 1997 (01:26) #4

One of the best books about Emily out there would have to be "Emily Bronte: Heretic" by Stevie Davis. It combines literary criticism and biographical interpretation, which I've sometimes found irritating in other post-structural studies (I'm a bit of an old-fashioned textual critic), but in this case it was wonderfully insightful. Edward Chitham wrote excellent biographies both Anne and Emily which are free of much of the inference of other books on the younger Brontes - as Davis said in her book, it is all too easy, in the absence of many facts about them, to bury Anne and Emily under a mountain of inference. I'm inclined to agree with Juliet Barker that there is so little factually known about Emily and Anne that it would be impossible to write a truely comprehensive biography about them.

~amy2 Mon, Aug 25, 1997 (11:43) #5

That sounds great -- I will look for that on amazon.com! It must be incredibly hard to write a bio on Emily or Anne -- I think that Barker says their surviving correspondence would fill only half a dozen pages. Not a lot to go by!

~SKAT Fri, Dec 26, 1997 (17:19) #6

A German friend of mine has just told me about a book she's read, called, 'Gespr�ch mit Emily' (Direct English Translation: 'A conversation with Emily') Does anyone know if this book exists under an English title? If not, I shall read the German version, and tell you whether it is good or bad!

~amy2 Tue, Jan 6, 1998 (22:11) #7

Riette: I didn't see this book up at the Haworth parsonage or listed on any of the Internet book stores. If you read it in German, please let us know how it is!

~SKAT Sun, Feb 1, 1998 (06:19) #8

Hello all! As I've just returned from a four week long holiday, I've not been able to read the above mentioned book yet, but hopefully that will change soon! I have something else to share with you though - can't believe I haven't mentioned it before. Last year my husband found me a real treasure in a shop that sells old books for next to nothing. It is a German translation of Jane Eyre, published during Charlotte's lifetime!!!! The book is in reasonable condition, heavily abridged, almost as if intended for a younger audience (or people so old they wouldn't survive the full version!), and consists of two volumes. The first volume is a first edition (1854), and the second a second edition (1855). He has written to various libraries (eg. British Libary, Library of Congress, Cambridge University Library, Munich) and NO ONE has it/has even heard of it! Also, the next German translation of JE, I discovered, was only published 30 years later! Amy, I'm sure you'd LOVE to see it! If ever you decide to come to Switzerland on holiday or whatever, let me know - per- haps I can show you it!

~amy2 Fri, Feb 6, 1998 (14:58) #9

That sounds good! I actually saw Charlotte's original mss. of JANE EYRE up at the Parsonage at Haworth, which was quite a thrill! She had very few revisions, but of course we don't know what her first copies looked like. . .

~anniebat Thu, Apr 9, 1998 (13:32) #10

I recently acquired a neat book from Barnes & Noble that consists of various descriptions of the Brontes, taken from contemporary accounts. I haven't got it with me today, to read the title of it, but it was published by the U of Iowa. THEN, at lunch, in the bookstore again, I found J. Barker's new book, The Brontes - A life in Letters," which is basically lots of letters back and forth among the sisters and everyone they wrote to, interspersed with informative background commentary by Ms. Barker. $35.00. It seems to contains most of the contemporary accounts published in the book mentioned above. I also acquired "In the Footsteps of the Brontes," a very old book (1915) written by a lady who seemed to be someone very much like the people subscribing to this conference - a fan.

~amy2 Thu, Apr 9, 1998 (18:24) #11

One of my favorites is Margaret Smith's THE LETTERS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. She is a very intelligent editor & her footnotes are interesting & instructive.

~BerthaMason Sun, Nov 1, 1998 (08:35) #12

A really cool book about the Brontes is Pauline Clarke "The Return of the Twelve" also known as "The Twelve and the Genii". It is a children�s book but it really is worth reading. Plot: A young boy discovers twelve wooden soldiers in the attic. They are alive! The boy has to help them to return to their real home, the Parsonage at Haworth where they had been brought to live by the Bronte children. A really charming book and I would be most eager to read the English original. Unfortunately it is out of print.

~Heulwen Wed, Nov 4, 1998 (20:02) #13

I really liked The Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks

~Plaridel Sat, May 5, 2001 (18:21) #14

One of my favorite books is The Bronte Story by Margaret Lane. This is Miss Lane's reconstruction of Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte.

~terry Sun, May 6, 2001 (13:09) #15

What are the highlights of the book for you?

~Yammi Sun, May 6, 2001 (15:40) #16

Need Help Finding 'A Life of Anne Bront�' by Edward Chitham (1991)!!!!! Please e-mail me: kyone1@hotmail.com