At Home with The Brontës

There has never been a literary family quite like the Brontës. In our autumn podcast Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth in Yorkshire, joined the Slightly Foxed team to discuss the story of the family’s life there.

The Brontës moved to Haworth in 1820 when Patrick Brontë became curate, and the parsonage was established as a museum in 1928 when it was acquired by the Brontë Society. Mrs Brontë and the oldest two daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, died there from tuberculosis, leaving Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell to be educated at home by their widowed father.

Ann talks about her work at the Parsonage Museum, a treasure trove of Brontë memorabilia, containing 9,000 items including clothes, letters, first editions and the sisters’ own writing boxes. The Brontës were a close-knit family, sharing their games and creating a rich imaginary world which formed the basis of their later writing. Patrick Brontë was a loving and in many ways an unconventional father, who encouraged the girls’ education and allowed them to read freely. He was a lover of the natural world, and on their daily walks in the wild moorland country around Haworth the sisters absorbed the atmosphere that would permeate their novels.

Recognition came in 1847 when each published a novel, though initially they hid behind the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was the first, an overnight sensation which was the talk of literary London, causing endless speculation about the identity of its author. Three months later came Emily’s Wuthering Heights, which shocked readers with its story of passion, violence and revenge, and finally Anne’s Agnes Grey. The scene could have been set for brilliant literary careers, but within two years both Emily and Anne were dead from tuberculosis, Emily at 30 and Anne at 29. Charlotte married her father’s curate, lived on to write Shirley and Villette, based on her time as a teacher in a school in Brussels, and died at 38. Branwell, who never fulfilled his family’s high expectations, died addicted to alcohol and opium when he was 31.

Even before Charlotte’s death Haworth had become a place of pilgrimage for Brontë fans, and Mrs Gaskell’s 1857 biography of her helped to establish the family’s lasting fame. Today the Parsonage Museum is hugely popular with visitors. It is also a centre for research and runs an annual festival of women’s writing. Ann’s deep knowledge of the Brontës and her experience of running the museum made for a fascinating discussion, leaving us to wonder, had the sisters lived longer, what their eventual literary legacy might have been.

Autumn book recommendations were Blythe Spirit, Ian Collins’s biography of Ronald Blythe, The Brothers York by Thomas Penn, Plainsong, an American novel by Kent Haruf, A Traitor’s Legacy by S. J. Parris, and The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller.

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Show Notes

Books Mentioned

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles mentioned on the podcast and listed below. Please get in touch with the Slightly Foxed office for more information. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: minutes; seconds)

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Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Love Divine (2:10)

Constance Tomkinson, Les Girls (3:35)

Ann Dinsdale & Sharon Wright, Let Me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar (6:22)

Ann Dinsdale, At Home with the Brontës (6:27)

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (8:23)

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (8:53)

Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (15:49)

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (15:51)

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (17:29)

Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey (23:41)

Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Brontës: Selected Poems (24:14)

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (27:57)

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (31:29)

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (34:52)

Ian Collins, Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe (45:21)

Thomas Penn, The Brother’s York: An English Tragedy (46:58)

Kent Haruf, Plainsong (47:53)

S. J. Parris, Traitor’s Legacy (49:36)

Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter (50:02)

Related Slightly Foxed Articles

–Love and Loss in Brussels, Helen MacEwan on Charlotte Brontë, Villette, Issue 61

 

  • Love and Loss in Brussels
    1 March 2019

    Love and Loss in Brussels

    In 2016, in a debate organized by the Brontë Society, a panel of four writers discussed the relative merits of Jane Eyre (see SF no. 40) and Charlotte Brontë’s last novel, Villette. When an audience vote was taken, the earlier and better-known book won, but only by a small majority; the two writers defending Villette had been eloquent in its praise. As one of them said, you often come to appreciate it later in life. If Jane Eyre is Pride and Prejudice, Villette is Persuasion.
    Read more

Other Links

–The Brontë Parsonage Museum

–Brontë Birthplace, Thornton

– The Brontë Society | The Brontë Parsonage Museum

– The Unthanks – The Emily Brontë Song Cycle

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach

Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith
Produced by Philippa Goodrich


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