I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights

zaterdag 24 augustus 2013

Today is my Birthday


And here, two of my presents!!!!!!
 
At Home with the Brontes: The History of Haworth Parsonage & Its Occupants.   Ann Dinsdale     
 
Haworth Parsonage is the world-famous home of the Brontes. Crowds of tourists are drawn to Haworth every year to discover what inspired Anne, Charlotte and Emily. Ann Dinsdale explores their lives there, the impact of the sisters' home on their writing, and their lasting legacy. However, the Parsonage has also been home to several other families. This book begins with the early history of the house and those who lived there before the arrival of the Brontes. After Patrick Bronte's death in 1861 the Parsonage became home to four of his successors before being purchased by the Bronte Society in 1928. Thereafter, it became home to four museum custodians and their families. All of these later occupants witnessed the development of tourism in Haworth, which had begun in Mr Bronte's own lifetime, and experienced the trials and tribulations of living in a literary shrine. Using a variety of sources, mostly unpublished, Ann Dinsdale also tells their stories.
 
In the Footsteps of the Brontes Mark Davis , Ann Dinsdale    
 
The lives and works of the celebrated Bronte family are so ingrained in our cultural psyche that we think we know them inside out - but walking in the footsteps of the literary greats and their characters offers a new perspective on their work. Our journey begins in Cambridge with the arrival of the young Patrick Bronte and follows his family's fortunes as they grow up in their home village of Haworth. We see the wild moorland locations that would inspire the haunting Wuthering Heights and the dour schools they attended that would later feature in Jane Eyre. We visit the homes of family and friends that provided the settings for many of their novels and travel with them across the industrial West Riding to York and the coast. This spectacular collection of photographs old and new explores the people and places that the brilliant Brontes knew and loved.

dinsdag 20 augustus 2013

Toy Lion and cup and saucer from a children's tea-set

 
From the Treasure Trove: Toy Lion. This carved wooden toy was once played with by the Bronte children and was donated to the Museum in 1928, when the Bronte Society acquired the Parsonage.
It's currently on display in our 'Heaven is a Home' exhibition in the Bonnell Room.

facebook/Bronte-Parsonage-Museum


Cup and saucer from a children's tea-set belonging to Charlotte Brontë. bronte./heaven-is-a-home/

maandag 19 augustus 2013

Chair and sofa

 
From the Treasure Trove: Branwell's chair. This is the chair Branwell favoured when socialising in the Black Bull. The pub claims to have THE chair, but we're pretty sure ours is the real one!
 

Emily supposedly died on this sofa because she refused to let anyone look after her and wouldn't go to bed.

zondag 18 augustus 2013

Brontë Scholars

Lifting the Veil on the Brontë Juvenilia: A Study of the Gondal Saga and Wuthering Heights
Tara, Emily
Advisor: Garcha, Amanpal; Hannibal, Hamlin
Issue Date: 2013-05
The Ohio State University. Department of English Undergraduate Research Theses; 2013

In 1848, before her death, Emily Brontë completed a novel that has transcended time and has become a staple of classic Victorian literature; that novel is Wuthering Heights. While many have read or have heard of this novel, the origination of the tale has been left to speculation and uncertainty. I hope to uncover some of the truth behind the novel's origination by comparing its plot, themes and characters to Emily's juvenilia poetry. The Gondal poetry, as it has come to be called, gives a greater insight into the framework for the novel, and through careful explication of specific passages, can be seen as a precursor to the popular gothic novel. While Wuthering Heights is a fictional story, I will give details that will explain that through studying the novel in relation to the juvenilia, it is more than possible that her writing contains elements of her personal life, environment and viewpoints.
Brontë Scholars (III)

The Parlour

The Parlour

Parsonage

Parsonage

Charlotte Bronte

Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by an old gentleman very like Miss Bronte, who shook hands with us, and then went to call his daughter. A long interval, during which we coaxed the old dog, and looked at a picture of Miss Bronte, by Richmond, the solitary ornament of the room, looking strangely out of place on the bare walls, and at the books on the little shelves, most of them evidently the gift of the authors since Miss Bronte's celebrity. Presently she came in, and welcomed us very kindly, and took me upstairs to take off my bonnet, and herself brought me water and towels. The uncarpeted stone stairs and floors, the old drawers propped on wood, were all scrupulously clean and neat. When we went into the parlour again, we began talking very comfortably, when the door opened and Mr. Bronte looked in; seeing his daughter there, I suppose he thought it was all right, and he retreated to his study on the opposite side of the passage; presently emerging again to bring W---- a country newspaper. This was his last appearance till we went. Miss Bronte spoke with the greatest warmth of Miss Martineau, and of the good she had gained from her. Well! we talked about various things; the character of the people, - about her solitude, etc., till she left the room to help about dinner, I suppose, for she did not return for an age. The old dog had vanished; a fat curly-haired dog honoured us with his company for some time, but finally manifested a wish to get out, so we were left alone. At last she returned, followed by the maid and dinner, which made us all more comfortable; and we had some very pleasant conversation, in the midst of which time passed quicker than we supposed, for at last W---- found that it was half-past three, and we had fourteen or fifteen miles before us. So we hurried off, having obtained from her a promise to pay us a visit in the spring... ------------------- "She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw; and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals, ('stippling,' don't the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in Villette was so exactly like what I had experienced, - vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep, - wondering what it was like, or how it would be, - till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened. I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it. ----------------------She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty than people have of stronger nerves, and better fortunes. All her life was but labour and pain; and she never threw down the burden for the sake of present pleasure. I don't know what use you can make of all I have said. I have written it with the strong desire to obtain appreciation for her. Yet, what does it matter? She herself appealed to the world's judgement for her use of some of the faculties she had, - not the best, - but still the only ones she could turn to strangers' benefit. They heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of her labours, and then found out she was much to be blamed for possessing such faculties. Why ask for a judgement on her from such a world?" elizabeth gaskell/charlotte bronte



Poem: No coward soul is mine

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.


O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life -- that in me has rest,
As I -- Undying Life -- have power in Thee!


Vain are the thousand creeds
That move mens hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,


To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.


With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.


Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.


There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou -- Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.


--
Emily Bronte

Family tree

The Bronte Family

Grandparents - paternal
Hugh Brunty was born 1755 and died circa 1808. He married Eleanor McClory, known as Alice in 1776.

Grandparents - maternal
Thomas Branwell (born 1746 died 5th April 1808) was married in 1768 to Anne Carne (baptised 27th April 1744 and died 19th December 1809).

Parents
Father was Patrick Bronte, the eldest of 10 children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor (Alice) McClory. He was born 17th March 1777 and died on 7th June 1861. Mother was Maria Branwell, who was born on 15th April 1783 and died on 15th September 1821.

Maria had a sister, Elizabeth who was known as Aunt Branwell. She was born in 1776 and died on 29th October 1842.

Patrick Bronte married Maria Branwell on 29th December 1812.

The Bronte Children
Patrick and Maria Bronte had six children.
The first child was Maria, who was born in 1814 and died on 6th June 1825.
The second daughter, Elizabeth was born on 8th February 1815 and died shortly after Maria on 15th June 1825. Charlotte was the third daughter, born on 21st April 1816.

Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls (born 1818) on 29th June 1854. Charlotte died on 31st March 1855. Arthur lived until 2nd December 1906.

The first and only son born to Patrick and Maria was Patrick Branwell, who was born on 26th June 1817 and died on 24th September 1848.

Emily Jane, the fourth daughter was born on 30th July 1818 and died on 19th December 1848.

The sixth and last child was Anne, born on 17th January 1820 who died on 28th May 1849.

Top Withens in the snow.

Top Withens in the snow.

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