Barker, Juliet. The Brontes: a Life in Letters. Overlook Press, 1997.
Reason read: March is considered Literature Month.
Arguably one of the best researched biographies of the Bronte family and definitely unique. Riding on the coattails of success from Juliet Barker’s first book, The Brontes, she came back with a follow-up. The Brontes: a Life in Letters offers new material in the forms of letters, manuscripts, the reminiscing of friends and teachers, and school documents on the lives of four of the Bronte siblings: Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell. (Sisters Maria and Elizabeth Bronte both died when they were eleven and ten respectively.) Nineteen new letters are published for the very first time.
Barker’s careful selection of letters creates a humanizing effect. You don’t think about well known “celebrity” types being real people with real feelings and faults. For example, waiting for the reviews of Jane Eyre to come out. As it was, Charlotte suffered from an inferiority complex when it came to social settings. She was truly shocked when people referred to her as a friend. On paper Charlotte had no problem being candid about the political climate of the day or, on a lighter subject, offering book recommendations on all sorts of subjects such as poetry, history, fiction, biography, natural history, and divinity. She and her siblings liked to live in the imaginary world of Gondal and were torn between several callings: teaching or writing or painting? Less is known about Emily, Anne and Branwell. Although Branwell’s involvement with a married woman and subsequent alcoholism complicated the lives of all the Brontes. Like a sniper of the disease variety, tuberculosis picked off the Brontes one by one. Branwell, Emily, and Anne all succumbed to the illness.
One of my favorite parts was learning that the Brontes wrote to established poets to inquire about their own future success as writers. Branwell wrote to William Wordsworth and Charlotte sought the advice of Robert Southey. The biography ramps up in interest when the three Brontes sisters decided to become published authors, cleverly disguised behind androgynous pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. However, The Westminster Review and W.M. Thackery both pegged the Jane Eyre author as being a woman. Charlotte wanted her books to be considered for the words she wrote rather than the sex of the author. What a progressive idea. I can only imagine the material she could have written into her old age.
As Branwell wrote to a friend, “Death only has made me neglectful of your kindness” (p 109). I wish I could send this quote to my friend.
As an aside, it was interesting to read about the struggling success of Wuthering Heights when in present day an adaptation is in the theaters.
Interesting sidenote: I read the lines about Charlotte’s death on March 30th, one hundred and seventy years after her passing.
Author fact: According to her Wiki page, Barker was the curator and librarian of the Bronte Parsonage Museum from 1983 to 1989.
Book trivia: Brontes: a Life in Letters is thought to be a companion read to Barker’s earlier book called The Brontes. Both books are considered groundbreaking.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: the Brits” (p 146).
~*LunaSea*~ 