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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BRI-BUN |
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BRONTE, CHARLOTTE (18161855), EMILY (1818-1848) , and ANNE (182o-1849), English novelists, were three of the six children of Patrick Bronte; a clergyman of the Church of England, who for the last forty-one years of his life was perpetual incumbent of the parish of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Patrick Bronte was born at Emsdale, Co. Down, Ireland, on the 17th of March 1777. His parents were of the peasant class, their original
Cambridge , in 1802. In the intervening years he had been successively a weaver and schoolmaster in his native country. From Cambridge he became a curate, first at Wethersfield in Essex, in 18o6, then for a few months at Wellington, Salop, in 1809. At the end of 1809 he accepted a curacy at Dewsbury, Yorkshire, following up this by one at Hartshead-cum-Clifton in the same county. At Hartshead Patrick Bronte married in 1812 Maria Branwell, a Cornishwoman, and there two children were born to him, Maria (18131825) and Elizabeth (18141825). Thence Patrick Bronte removed to Thornton, some 3 M. from Bradford, and here his wife gave birth to four children, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell (18171848), Emily Jane, and Anne, three of whom were to attain literary distinction. In April 182o, three months after the birth of Anne Bronte, her father accepted the living of Haworth, a village
Upon the death of Mrs Bronte her husband invited his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Branwell, to leave Penzance and to take up her residence with his family at Haworth. Miss Branwell accepted the trust and would seem to have watched over her nephew and five nieces with conscientious care. The two eldest of those nieces were not long in following their mother. Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily, were all sent to the Clergy Daughters' school at Cowan Bridge in 1824, and Maria and Elizabeth returned home in the following year to die. How far the bad food and drastic discipline were responsible cannot be accurately demonstrated. Charlotte gibbeted the school long years afterwards in Jane Eyre, under the thin disguise of " Lowood," and the principal, the Rev. William Carus Wilson (17921859), has been universally accepted as the counterpart of Mr Naomi Brocklehurst in the same novel. But congenital disease more probably accounts for the tragedy from which happily Charlotte and Emily escaped, both returning in 1825 to a prolonged home life at Haworth. Here the four surviving children amused themselves in intervals of study under their aunt's guidance with precocious literary aspirations. The many tiny booklets upon which they laboured in the succeeding years have been happily preserved. We find stories, verses and essays, all in the minutest handwriting, none giving any indication of the genius which in the case of two of the four children was to add to the indisputably permanent in literature. At sixteen years of agein 1831Charlotte Bronte became a pupil at the school of Miss Margaret Wooler (17921885) at Roe Head, Dewsbury. She left in the following year to assist in the education of the younger sisters, bringing with her much additional proficiency in drawing, French and composition; she took with her also the devoted friendship of two out of her ten fellow-pupilsMary Taylor (18171893) and Ellen Nussey (18171897). With Miss Taylor and Miss Nussey she corresponded for the remainder of her life, and her letters to the latter make up no small part of what has been revealed to us of her life story. Her next three years at Haworth were varied by occasional visits to one or other of these friends. In 1835 she returned to Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head as a governess, her sister Emily accompanying her as a pupil, but remaining only three months, and Anne then taking her place. The year following the school was removed to Dewsbury. In 1838 Charlotte went back to Haworth and soon afterwards received her first offer of marriagefrom a clergyman, Henry Nussey, the brother of her friend Ellen. This was followed a little later by a second offer from a curate named Bryce
establishment . But the two girls were hastily called back to England before the year had expired by the announcement of the critical illness of their aunt. Miss Branwell died on the 29th of October 1842. She bequeathed sufficient money to her nieces to enable them to reconsider their plan of life. Instead of a school at Bridlington which had been talked of, they could now remain with their father, utilize their aunt's room as a classroom, and take pupils. But Charlotte was not yet satisfied with what the few months on Belgian soil had done for her, and determined to accept M. Heger's offer that she should return to Brussels as a governess. Hence the year 1843 was passed by her at the Pensionnat Heger in that capacity, and in this period she undoubtedly widened her intellectual sphere by reading the many books in French literature that her friend M. Heger lent her. But life took on a very sombre shade in the lonely environment in which she found herself. She became so depressed that on one occasion she took refuge
Matters were complicated by the fact that the only brother, Patrick Branwell, had about this time become a confirmed drunkard. Branwell had been the idol of his aunt and of his sisters. Educated under his father's care, he had early shown artistic leanings, and the slender resources of the family had been strained to provide him with the means of entering at the Royal Academy as a pupil. This was in 1835. Branwell, it would seem, indulged in a glorious month of extravagance in London and then returned home. His art studies were continued for a time at Leeds, but it may be assumed that no commissions came to him, and at last he became tutor to the son of a Mr Postlethwaite at Barrow-in-Furness. Ten months later he was a booking-clerk at Sowerby Bridge station on the Leeds & Manchester railway, and later at Luddenden Foot. Then he became tutor in the family of a clergyman named Robinson at Thorp Green, where his sister Anne was governess. Finally he returned to Haworth to loaf at the village
The literary life had, however, opened bravely for the three girls during those years. In 1846 a volume of verse appeared from the shop of Aylott & Jones of Paternoster Row; " Poems, by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell," was on the title-page. These names disguised the identity of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. The venture cost the sisters about 50 in all, but only two copies were sold. There were nineteen poems by Charlotte, twenty-one by Emily, and the same number by Anne. A consensus of criticism has accepted the fact that Emily's verse alone revealed true poetic genius. This was unrecognized then except by her sister Charlotte. It is obvious now to all. The failure of the poems did not deter the authors from further effort. They had each a novel to dispose of. Charlotte Bronte's was called The Master, which before it was sent off to London was retitled The Professor. Emily's story was entitled Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Gray. All these stories travelled from publisher to publisher. At last The Professor reached the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., of Cornhill. The " reader" for that firm, R. Smith Williams (1800-1875), was impressed, as were also his employers. Charlotte Bronte received in August 1847 a letter informing her that whatever the merits of The Professorand it was hinted that it lacked " varied interest
Meanwhile the novels of Emily and Anne had been accepted by T. C. Newby. They were published together in three volumes in December 1847, two months later than Jane Eyre, although the proof sheets had been passed by the authors before their sister's novel had been sent to the publishers. The dilatoriness of Mr Newby was followed up by considerable energy when he saw the possibility of the novels by Ellis and Acton Bell sailing on the wave of Currer Bell's popularity, and he would seem very quickly to have accepted another manuscript by Anne Bronte, for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
In the interval between the death of Branwell and of Emily, Charlotte had been engaged upon a new novel Shirley. Two-thirds were written, but the story was then laid aside while its author was nursing her sister Anne. She completed the book after Anne's death, and it was published in October 1849. The following winter she visited London as the guest of her publisher, Mr George Smith, and was introduced to Thackeray, to whom she had dedicated Jane Eyre. The following year she repeated the visit, sat for her portrait to George Richmond, and was considerably lionized by a host of admirers. In August 1850 she visited the English lakes as the guest of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and met Mrs Gaskell, Miss Martineau, Matthew Arnold
The bare recital of the Bronte story can give no idea of its undying interest
The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Mrs Gaskell, was first published in 1857. Owing to the many controversial questions it aroused, as to the identity of Lowood in Jane Eyre with Cowan Bridge school, as to the relations of Branwell Bronte with his employer's wife, as to the supposed peculiarities of Mr Bronte, and certain other minor points, the third edition was considerably changed. The Life has been many times reprinted, but may be read in its most satisfactory form in the Haworth edition (1902), issued by the original
fathered from the Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Augustine Birrell 1887), The Brontes in Ireland, by William Wright
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