Chadwick's In the Footsteps of the Brontës republished

Chadwick's In the Footsteps of the Brontës republished

One of the classic Brontë biographies: Ellis H. Chadwick's In the Footsteps of the Brontës (first published on 1914) has been republished:

In the Footsteps of the Brontës
Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick
Paperback
Series: Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies
ISBN:9781108034166
Publication date:October 2011
604pages
40 b/w illus.
Dimensions: 216 x 140 mm
Weight: 0.76kg

A few years after Esther Alice Chadwick (fl. 1882–1928) - who wrote under the name Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick - had read a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, she moved to a house near the Haworth vicarage where the Brontë family had lived. As a result, Chadwick was able to speak to many people who had known the family, and in 1914 she published this extensive biography of the family. Beginning with the Irish ancestry of the three famous sisters, Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), she traces their short but eventful lives. Chadwick examines their early years and the influence of their father, Patrick, his work in the ministry and the family's time at Haworth. Later chapters are devoted to the sisters' education and their literary output, seeking to understand their extraordinary creativity amid the difficult circumstances of their life.

Bronteblog/chadwicks-in-footsteps-of-brontes/     -----  e-book/in footsteps of brontes

Ferndean Manor

Moor Lodge at Scar Top, Haworth, West Yorkshire. The likely setting used by Charlotte Bronte for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre.

This article is presented as an introduction to the full serialised story which is being published over the coming months in the print version of the Haworth  newspaper, Voice of the Valleys . Local researcher Ian Howard believes he has found the true location that inspired Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. The chance discovery was made during his 30 year search for a first edition of Jane Eyre by Currer Bell that belonged to his family (who had close links to the Bronte family) and was stolen from St James Church, Thornton, West Yorkshire during its centenary celebrations. That search continues but the investigation has turned up many other amazing and previously unrevealed details
New research has focused in on the most likely candidate for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. 

Moor Lodge is situated above ScarTop near Haworth in West Yorkshire. Built in the 18th century by Amos Nelson, it was used only very occasionally  as a hunting lodge, the white sheets being removed from furniture and the household adornments dusted for the arrival of a select group of influential local businessmen.


Read more interesting articles. Voice of the Valleys/ferndean-manor

• Clues in Jane Eyre
• The key to understanding Jane Eyre is held in Freemasonry 
• Moor Lodge 
• About the author Ian Howard

November. What did the Bronte Sisters see when they were walking over the Moors?

 

books/wuthering 

Shorter days and weaker sun mean lower temperatures, we can experience the first signs of winter; heavy rain gales and snow are all features of the month. On cold still days mist and fog are characteristic of November.

Winter food is becoming scarce for wildlife and berries such as Holly, Rowan Hawthorn will be welcome for birds. As the nights are getting longer familiar garden birds such Garden birds such as the Blackbird, Blue Tit and Robin will be more active at dawn and just before dusk in readiness for the long night ahead. This is a good time to feed birds as they will appreciate a meal. This will encourage other birds such as Long Tailed Tits to visit. Redwing and Fieldfare which have migrated from Northern Europe to winter in Britain can be seen now.

Later in the month when the tree canopy has mostly gone is a good time to go looking for birds, if you look carefully you might see the Great Spotted Woodpecker and look for Treecreeper and Nuthatch which move about the trunk and branches searching for grubs.

Plants are in their dormant stage and there are very few signs of growth at this time of year, Fungi should still be seen early in the month. haworth-village/nature/nature-diary/november/november

haworth-village/nature/nature-diary/

“Jane Eyre”

J

ane Eyre is one of my ( Julia from Hooked on Houses) favorite novels of all time, so I have made a point of watching every movie version I could find over the years. I’ve seen the ones with Orson Welles, William Hurt, Timothy Dalton, and Ciaran Hinds. I know it’s widely debated among Jane Eyre fans, but my favorite is the Toby Stephens-Ruth Wilson miniseries produced for Masterpiece Theatre in 2006. I’ve watched it at least four times–a fifth to take photos of Thornfield Hall for this post–and I never get tired of it. 

Read more: Thornfield-Hall-in-masterpiece-theatres-jane-eyre

Wuthering Heights

The Yorkshire Post highlights the fact that the film will be screened at the opening gala (November 4) of the Leeds Film Festival:

The stars will be out in Leeds this week as the cast and director of the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights will be special guests at the gala screening.
It will open the Leeds International Film Festival and a giant banner has gone up across the front of Leeds Town Hall with an image from Wuthering Heights on it to celebrate the festival’s 25th anniversary. (...)
Bafta-winning director Andrea Arnold will be joined by Leeds actor James Howson and others who will attend the opening gala screening at Leeds Town Hall on Thursday night.

By the way, the film will also open the Cornwall Film Festival the same day, November 4.
bronteblog/wuthering-heights-chooses-you.

Strange ideas about Charlotte and Branwell Bronte

• Charlotte had a brown skin
• Charlotte and Ellen Nussey were lesbians
• John Lennon was Branwell in an earlier life

• Charlotte Bronte had a brown skin.

I received this reaction on my blog What did the Bronte Sisters look like?

Did you all notice the descriptions of brown and black skinned persons in Jane Eyre? Villette is described as of 'brunette'complexion, on the first page. Her Juvenalia on Angria stars with the lament of an African Queen. According to her publisher Smith, her face was marred by the shape of her mouth and complexion. She is supposed to have had a large mouth. Ugly was used to describe subnasal prognatism, a classical African facial trait. So I presume Charlotte Brontë had brown skin, and generous Black lips. 'Ugly' could mean she looked African. Perhaps today we would not judge so harshly. The same story about missing portraits and unlikely portraits is also found in the stories about Jane Austen (1775-1817). My research is : 'The eloquence of her blood; Was Jane Austen Black? We are dealing with the fall out of the French Revolution and that of 1848, when black supremacy was overcome. The nobility was brown and black of complexion, and despotically oppressed their white serfs. 

Door egmond codfried op What did the Bronte Sisters look like? op 12-10-11

bluebloodisblackblood

The Suppression of Lesbian and Gay History

Women in particular have been brought up to value discretion, modesty and propriety, and families take special care to protect the unblemished reputation of their female members: this ‘would have ensured that most passions between women were presented in letters and memoirs as harmless and innocent’ (Donoghue 1993). But at the same time, women tend to record more intimate personal details in their diaries and letters than men, possibly because they are urged to cultivate their sensibilities and express their feelings more than men, so it is not surprising that documents of possibly-lesbian important are frequently suppressed. None of Ellen Nussey’s letters to Charlotte Brontë survive; presumably they were destroyed just as Nussey was asked by Brontë’s husband Arthur Bell, soon after their marriage, to destroy those she had received from Brontë because of their ‘passionate language’. She refused, but her proposed biography of Brontë had to be suppressed because Bell refused to grant her copyright permission to quote any of the letters.

Women’s feelings for other women are regularly trivialized in biographies, while their feelings for men are exaggerated. To dismiss the love of Charlotte Brontë and Ellen Nussey as an ‘adolescent crush’, as has been done, is to define adolescence ‘as a somewhat protracted period continuing until the age of 25 or so’ (Miller 1989). 

http://rictornorton.co.uk/suppress.htmc

It is not surprising that Mrs Hall’s connections arouse envy in others. None of the Brontës had children and, to my knowledge, no one has ever claimed there to be any illegitimate offspring, even for the decadent Branwell. Direct descendancy being out of the question, Audrey Hall has the next best thing: Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontës best friend, and the recipient of hundreds of Charlotte’s elegantly penned letters. The Nussey family were inter-related with the Cookes and the Taylors, two great mill-owning families from whom Audrey is herself descended. They all lived in the Birstall area, a few miles east of Haworth, and Audrey’s family would have met Charlotte Brontë when she stayed with Ellen Nussey. Rather daringly, I mentioned controversial claims of a lesbian affair between Charlotte and Ellen. Audrey dismissed this right away. “There’s no evidence at all – my family would have known. charlotte cory/bronte/afriendofcharlotte/

Letters to Charlotte: The Letters from Ellen Nussey to Charlotte Brontë 

Caeia March
* Paperback: 290 pages
* Publisher: Pink Press; First edition (14 Oct 2010)
* ISBN-10: 1907499431 * ISBN-13: 978-1907499432

Ellen I wish I could live with you always, I begin to cling to you more fondly than ever I did. If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own I do think we might live and love on till Death without being dependent on any third person for happiness. (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 26 September 1836)

Certain fragments from Charlotte Brontë's private correspondence have sparkled endless debates, but few - if any - have been as thoroughly discussed and examined as the above⁽¹⁾. bronteblog/letters-to-charlotte

• Similarities between Branwell Brontë and John Lennon

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In the Jewelle St. James book, the author notes the similarities between Branwell Brontë and John Lennon: Branwell, like John, was an artist and a poet. Branwell drank and did drugs, actually he did more than doing drugs, he was an addict. Branwell, like John, lost his mother at an early age, and had sisters but no brothers. Oh, and Branwell had good friends in Liverpool. … Branwell and John both drew caricatures, depicting aspects of their lives. [And finally - ] Branwell’s self portraits are the image of John Lennon! The nose, the glasses, everything.

Unfortunately, the book neglects to include photos to illustrate the point, so here we go, internet to the rescue!There aren’t that many pictures of Branwell Brontë to go by, but of those we have, the similarities with John Lennon are indeed striking, right down to the glasses.
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We swear that this is not a joke. Believe it or not, this has just been published:

The Lennon - Brontë Connection
Jewelle St. James  
Foreword by Judy Hall
Paperback: 162 pages
Publisher: St. James Publishing; 1st edition (October 14, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0973275243
ISBN-13: 978-0973275247

Is ex-Beatle John Lennon the reincarnation of Branwell Brontë, troubled brother to England's most literary sisters? The untimely death of John Lennon in 1980 prompted a Canadian woman, Jewelle St. James, to investigate life after death and other spiritual phenomena. Research spanning thirty years, and ten journeys to England, was necessary to unravel past-life mysteries and other surprising connections. bronteblogimagine-with-branwell

Abigails Ateliers

Interesting information about Abigails Ateliers

abigailsateliers/abigails-ateliers-and-lyn-marie-cunliffe-on-the-net/

http://abigailsateliers.com/

Reactions

To my surprise i see reactions om my weblog i did not see before.
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The Reproduction Bronte Samplers can also be purchased online here http://www.moirablackburn.com/reproduction/repro_main.htm

Door Anoniem op Samplers of the Bronte sisters op 24-5-11

Thank you Anoniem.

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It's great finding information I've posted on my website to be useful to other people on the web. I had never heard of the Bronte sisters until I saw one of my Art Deco building photos from Wellington in New Zealand on your blog and discovered the rich literary legacy made my the Bronte family. Thank you for enlightening me and I hope others will benefit from the work you have invested into getting all this information onto the one page. Best regards, David

Door DecoWorks Pty Ltd op Searching for the history of Mary Taylor, the frie... op 27-3-11

Thank you David, great to hear from you!

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The Green Dwarf

Celebrate Halloween with a Brontë (sort of) ghost story. Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia story The Green Dwarf (1833) contains an episode where the emperor Napoleon encounters an spectre (not surprisingly renamed in anthologies, Napoleon and the Sceptre). Not really very spooky but very nice to read considering that Charlotte was 17 years old when she wrote it. 
http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/

Bonnets, Costume Institute, Metropolitain of Art

 

Bonnets metmuseum.org/collections

The female silhouette of the middle of the 19th century consisted of a fitted corseted bodice and wide full skirts. The conical skirts developed between the 1830s, when the high waist of the Empire silhouette was lowered and the skirts became more bell shaped, to the late 1860s, when the fullness of the skirts were pulled to the back and the bustle developed. The flared skirts of the period gradually increased in size throughout and were supported by a number of methods. Originally support came from multiple layers of petticoats which, due to weight and discomfort, were supplanted by underskirts comprised of graduated hoops made from materials such as baleen, cane and metal. The fashions during this time allowed the textiles to stand out because of the vast surface areas of the skirt and a relatively minimal amount of excess trim.

metmuseum.org/collections

 

Fashionable dress of the 1840s was inspired by Queen Victoria (1819-1901) who was crowned in 1838. Due to her modesty and youth she favored styles which were reserved as befitted a young queen. The elongated bodice and wide V-shape over the bust were essential parts of this decade and can be seen in this example. The addition of many textures from the textile pattern, fringe, tassels, and fabric manipulation through pleating, shirring and puffing, give the dress great visual appeal.