See some spirits inhaunted pubs in Yorkshire

Pubs in Haworth and Stanbury feature in a new book about haunted hostelries across the UK. Ghost-hunter Donald Stuart, 75, cycled to 2,000 spooky pubs including 33 in Yorkshire. He visited the Black Bull, Kings Arms and Old White Lion in Haworth, and Old Silent in Stanbury. The book, Haunted English Pubs, has accounts about all four among 600 short articles. His ghosts include Oliver Cromwell, Jack The Ripper, monks, nuns, witches, headless horses and a Saxon warrior. Mr Stuart is a retired journalist and a member of the Ghost Club and Pub History Society. He has written several books about old inns and villages in the south of England. He said that in the Black Bull people had reported footsteps following them up the stairs, cold hands stroking their foreheads, and the sound of a child weeping. Branwell Bronte is said to haunt the pub with dishevelled red hair and a wild look in his eyes. The Kings Arms, one-time site of a slaughterhouse, has recorded poltergeist activity and strange sounds from the cellars where undertakers used to store bodies. Guests at the Old White Lion have reported strange happenings during the night, such as waking to see a pretty white-faced woman staring at them.They have also felt a dizzy sensation of falling through space and waking up. The Old Silent Inn has long been renowned for supernatural sightings and has hosted several all-night ghost hunts. Supernatural sightings have included a travelling man, moving paintings, self-opening curtains, and ghost cats yowling as they rush to be fed by a ghost landlady.

Haunted English Pubs costs £10 including postage from Donald Stuart, 3 Waldeck Terrace, Mortlake, London SW14 7HE or theinnbook.co.uk. keighley news

Juxtabook/the-road-to-haworth

Frivolous fragments/Charlotte Bronte

Weblogs with pictures about the Haworth parsonage.

bertina.reismee.nl 
It is fun to search for weblogs
 with information/ pictures and so on
 about the Brontes
If you keep a weblog
or you know one, 
with articles or pictures 
interesting for this weblog,
 please let me know.. 

tricia foley in the country/ bronte-country

November Pictures

Haworth and surroundings.

Brontëmania: Why the three sisters are bigger than ever

Charlotte Brontë detested Jane Austen. Hyperbole? Listen to the words of the author of Jane Eyre, writing to GH Lewes, the free-thinking editor and author who became George Eliot's partner. In 1848 – after the novel's publication had brought "Currer Bell" (Charlotte's pseudonym) notoriety among the London literati – Lewes advised her to read Pride and Prejudice. "Why do you like Miss Austen so much?" Charlotte – "puzzled" – replies. "I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers," with "no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses."

Lewes allows that "Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no 'sentiment'" – or, as Austen might put it, "sensibility". Charlotte, enraged, responds: "Can there be a great artist without poetry?" She contrasts Austen's prissy decorum with the "deep feeling for his kind" that in her eyes enriches and validates the satire of William Makepeace Thackeray, who had championed Jane Eyre to the extent that London gossip assumed "Currer Bell" had been his governess and mistress.

In 1850, Charlotte returns to the attack in a letter to WS Williams, the supportive literary adviser to her publisher who became a close epistolary friend. Now Charlotte has read Emma, and she dislikes it even more. She acknowledges that Austen "does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of well-bred English people curiously well", but "she ruffles the reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound; the Passions are perfectly unknown to her". Her scorn mounts: "Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete, and rather insensible... woman; if this is heresy – I cannot help it."

"Heresy" it remains. Did Charlotte even know that both novelists were the offspring of impecunious Church of England clergymen who struggled to support large families while their daughters toiled to combine heavy domestic duties with the fulfilment of the literary gifts that few expected them even to possess, let along bring into the public domain? Her own father, Patrick Branty, a talented but penniless boy from County Down, had overcome every obstacle to enter St John's College, Cambridge, and on his path towards ordination in the Church was subsidised by the great Abolitionist William Wilberforce.

Charlotte's striking refusal of any solidarity or sympathy with Jane rings down the years. Much was at stake then; it continues to be at stake now. Charlotte knew on which side she stood: burning passion against cool calculation; spontaneity against artifice; free nature against bloodless cultivation; Romantic self-expression against neo-Classical control; Gothic sensation against drawing-room finesse; humble folk against scheming snobs; womanly virtues against ladylike manners. Plenty of readers have added, then and now: North against South. Of course, any close reading will blur these battle-lines, but the Brontës enjoyed a scrap.

After a period in which versions of Austen hogged our screens, the Brontës have fought back. Released today, Andrea Arnold's savagely uncompromising Wuthering Heights joins a line of adaptations of Emily's only surviving novel that began in 1920 (a lost work by AV Bramble) and went on to include renderings from directors as varied as William Wyler – with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon still the ranking Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw to many fans – and Yoshishige Yoshida, Luis Buñuel and Jacques Rivette. Earlier this year, Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre, with Mia Wasikowska as the uncowed governess and Michael Fassbender the sulphurous Mr Rochester, offered a rather smoother ride through another much-adapted book, albeit one that shares with Arnold – and the Brontës – a rapt attention to every squall and storm that blows across the ever-changing skies above the Yorkshire moors.

Yet the Brontë season will not end with Andrea Arnold and her black Heathcliff – a piece of casting that picks up on a long critical debate not only about the origins of the "dark-skinned gipsy" found wandering the streets of Liverpool, but about the colonial dimensions of both books. (In 1966, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea imagined the Jamaican life of Bertha Mason, the first, attic-bound Mrs Rochester.)

Read more 

• Five novelists on what the Brontës mean to them
• Margaret Drabble
• Michèle Roberts
• Sarah Hall
• Stevie Davies
• Kate Mosse

independent/brontmania-why-the-three-sisters-are-bigger-than-ever-

Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Brontë's Grave

A new book about literary tourism has just been published:

Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Brontë's Grave
Simon Goldhill
144 pages | 12 halftones, 1 map | 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 | © 2011
Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel
University of Chicago Press

The Victorian era was the high point of literary tourism. Writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Sir Walter Scott became celebrities, and readers trekked far and wide for a glimpse of the places where their heroes wrote and thought, walked and talked. Even Shakespeare was roped in, as Victorian entrepreneurs transformed quiet Stratford-upon-Avon into a combination shrine and tourist trap.

Stratford continues to lure the tourists today, as do many other sites of literary pilgrimage throughout Britain. And our modern age could have no better guide to such places than Simon Goldhill. In Freud's Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Brontë's Grave, Goldhill makes a pilgrimage to Sir Walter Scott's baronial mansion, Wordsworth's cottage in the Lake District, the Brontë parsonage, Shakespeare's birthplace, and Freud's office in Hampstead. Traveling, as much as possible, by methods available to Victorians—and gamely negotiating distractions ranging from broken bicycles to a flock of giggling Japanese schoolgirls—he tries to discern what our forebears were looking for at these sites, as well as what they have to say to the modern mind. What does it matter that Emily Brontë’s hidden passions burned in this specific room? What does it mean, especially now that his fame has faded, that Scott self-consciously built an extravagant castle suitable for Ivanhoe—and star-struck tourists visited it while he was still living there? Or that Freud's meticulous recreation of his Vienna office is now a meticulously preserved museum of itself? Or that Shakespeare’s birthplace features student actors declaiming snippets of his plays . . . in the garden of a house where he almost certainly never wrote a single line?

Goldhill brings to these inquiries his trademark wry humor and a lifetime's engagement with literature. The result is a travel book like no other, a reminder that even today, the writing life still has the power to inspire. bronteblog brontes-grave.html

Appeal to 'save' Charlotte Bronte treasure

The manuscript will be auctioned by Sotheby's in London on 15 December

A museum dedicated to the Bronte sisters has launched an appeal for funds to buy a "lost" Charlotte Bronte manuscript and put it on public show.

Young Men's Magazine Number 2 is valued at up to £300,000 by Sotheby's.The Bronte Parsonage Museum, based in the literary family's home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, already has four of the other five volumes in the series. It is "the most significant manuscript to come to light in decades", museum director Andrew McCarthy said. The 4,000-word miniature magazine was written by Charlotte at the age of 14 and contains stories set in Glass Town, a fantasy world created by the sisters and their brother Branwell.

It has never been published and is considered to be important for the light it sheds on Charlotte's literary development. It is being sold by a private European collector."It's certainly the most significant Bronte manuscript to come to light in decades, but we should also see this as a national treasure with significance to our broader literary heritage," Mr McCarthy said. 

"We feel very strongly that it belongs here in Haworth and we're appealing for people to get in touch if they can help us raise the funds to make sure it does return."

Mr. McCarthy added: "It's very difficult for us to compete in a market where these items can fetch such high prices and we need the support of organisations and individuals to make sure that they are returned to Haworth."

One story in the manuscript is a precursor to the famous passage in Jane Eyre in which Mr Rochester's insane wife, who is kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to his bed curtains. BBC/news/entertainment-arts

Not Emily Brontë

The Grantham Journal brings news of yet one more Brontë-related auction (well, not really).


Emily Brontë was extraordinarily shy and only a handful of portraits of her exist, but an oil painting of a young woman handed over to a Northamptonshire auctioneer by a retired headmaster bears all the hallmarks of the famous literary figure.
The picture, which shows a young lady wearing a straw bonnet held in place by a silk scarf, could be of any young woman from the early 19th century, but it is thought that there is enough evidence to suggest that it is Emily Brontë.
It is almost identical to a print of a portrait of Emily Brontë published in The Woman At Home (July 1894 issue) which itself was attributed to Charlotte Brontë.
As well as that, written on the back of the picture, are the words 'Emily Brontë - Sister of Charlotte B... Currer Bell', and on the backing paper 'Emily Brontë/Sister of Charlotte Brontë/Ellis Bell' - Currer and Ellis Bell were the pen names of Charlotte and Emily Brontë from the winter of 1845/6 when the sisters published their poems and adopted pen names.
It is thought that the artist responsible for the newly found picture may be John Hunter Thompson (1808-1890) of Bradford who was a professional portrait artist and friend of Branwell Bronte, Emily's brother.
The painting is set to go on sale at JP Humbert Auctioneers in Towcester on Thursday December 15 at a provisional estimate of £10,000-£15,000.
Jonathan Humbert, managing director, said the painting will generate international interest and added that he was struck by how rare it is to have a portrait of the shy author.
"This painting has all the hallmarks of being a discovery of utmost importance to 19th century English literature with a strong raft of supporting evidence. We are very excited about bringing this to market," he said.Dubbing Heathcliff

Bronte Blog/not-emily-bronte

More websites such as Express (which also publishes this colour image) or Smash Hits are echoing the news of Emily Brontë's portrait (NOT! See yesterday's post) being auctioned in a few weeks. We understand the auction house's reasons for seeling this as Emily Brontë, but sorry, that's simply not her.

john-hunter-thompson/paintings/slideshow

‘The Young Men’s Magazines’

News release: Bronte Parsonage Blog

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire is appealing for help from funding bodies and members of the public to acquire an important Charlotte Brontë manuscript which is to be auctioned at Sothebys in London on Thursday 15 December. 

The manuscript, previously untraced and unpublished, is expected to fetch between £200,000 - £300,000 and contains three works by the young Charlotte Brontë, produced in September 1830 when she was 14 years old. It is part of a series of  manuscripts known as ‘The Young Men’s Magazines’ which were inspired by a box of toy soldiers bought for Branwell Brontë by his father in 1826.

The soldiers sparked a remarkable burst of creativity from the young Brontës who began creating stories which were handwritten into tiny books intended for the toy soldiers to ‘read’. Their minute scale and miniature details, such as title pages and advertisements, were modelled on a popular publication of the time, Blackwood’s Magazine. The Brontë Museum has the largest collection of these little manuscript books in the world and they are amongst the most popular exhibits with visitors and have also been the subject of much scholarly research in recent years.

The little books chart Charlotte Bronte’s development as a writer and reveal how many of her early themes carry over into her published novels. The first piece in the manuscript to be sold at Sotheby’s recounts how a murderer is driven to madness after being haunted by his victims, and how ‘an immense fire’ burning in his head causes his bed curtains to set alight, prefiguring the well-known scene in Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, in which Rochester’s insane wife sets light to his bed curtains.

This manuscript is currently in a private collection and has never previously been published. It’s certainly the most significant Brontë manuscript to come to light in decades, but we should also see this as a national treasure with significance to our broader literary heritage. It would be very sad indeed if this wonderful manuscript were not repatriated or was again lost to a private collection. We feel very strongly that it belongs here in Haworth and we’re appealing for people to get in touch if they can help us raise the funds to make sure it does return, so that visitors can enjoy it, either here at the museum or through our on-line resources.

Andrew McCarthy

Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

As an independent charity the museum is constantly trying to raise funds to support its work, a fundamental part of which is seeking to acquire such important Brontë material and making it accessible to the public.

It’s very difficult for us to compete in a market where these items can fetch such high prices and we need the support of organizations and individuals to make sure that they are returned to Haworth. If anyone feels they can make a financial contribution to help us, this would be very much appreciated

Andrew McCarthy

Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

I really hope

 The Bronte Parsonage Museum 

will succeed.

The manuscript belongs there!

‘The Young Men’s Magazines’

News release: Bronte Parsonage Blog

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire is appealing for help from funding bodies and members of the public to acquire an important Charlotte Brontë manuscript which is to be auctioned at Sothebys in London on Thursday 15 December. 

The manuscript, previously untraced and unpublished, is expected to fetch between £200,000 - £300,000 and contains three works by the young Charlotte Brontë, produced in September 1830 when she was 14 years old. It is part of a series of  manuscripts known as ‘The Young Men’s Magazines’ which were inspired by a box of toy soldiers bought for Branwell Brontë by his father in 1826.

The soldiers sparked a remarkable burst of creativity from the young Brontës who began creating stories which were handwritten into tiny books intended for the toy soldiers to ‘read’. Their minute scale and miniature details, such as title pages and advertisements, were modelled on a popular publication of the time, Blackwood’s Magazine. The Brontë Museum has the largest collection of these little manuscript books in the world and they are amongst the most popular exhibits with visitors and have also been the subject of much scholarly research in recent years.

The little books chart Charlotte Bronte’s development as a writer and reveal how many of her early themes carry over into her published novels. The first piece in the manuscript to be sold at Sotheby’s recounts how a murderer is driven to madness after being haunted by his victims, and how ‘an immense fire’ burning in his head causes his bed curtains to set alight, prefiguring the well-known scene in Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, in which Rochester’s insane wife sets light to his bed curtains.

This manuscript is currently in a private collection and has never previously been published. It’s certainly the most significant Brontë manuscript to come to light in decades, but we should also see this as a national treasure with significance to our broader literary heritage. It would be very sad indeed if this wonderful manuscript were not repatriated or was again lost to a private collection. We feel very strongly that it belongs here in Haworth and we’re appealing for people to get in touch if they can help us raise the funds to make sure it does return, so that visitors can enjoy it, either here at the museum or through our on-line resources.

Andrew McCarthy

Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

As an independent charity the museum is constantly trying to raise funds to support its work, a fundamental part of which is seeking to acquire such important Brontë material and making it accessible to the public.

It’s very difficult for us to compete in a market where these items can fetch such high prices and we need the support of organizations and individuals to make sure that they are returned to Haworth. If anyone feels they can make a financial contribution to help us, this would be very much appreciated

Andrew McCarthy

Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

I really hope

 The Bronte Parsonage Museum 

will succeed.

The manuscript belongs there!

Gaskell Blog on temporary hiatus until March 2012.

From the Gaskell blog

Just a little note to say Gaskell Blog will be on temporary hiatus until March 2012.

 In the meantime, please visit my other blog, November’s Autumn, 

where I will still be posting during the break.

 Read on: about-anne-bronte-part-two

a  story about Anne Bronte

Bronte Weather Project

From Bronte weather: 

I've finished reading the selected collection of Charlotte's letters (a total of 169 letters).

They have revealed a fascinating insight in to Charlotte's life and i've really enjoyed reading them while finding references to the weather.

There are a few references amongst the letters with the majority connecting weather conditions with health and death:

"Anne was worse during the warm weather we had about a week ago - she grew weaker and both the pain in her side and her cough were worse - strange to say since it is colder, she has appeared rather to revive than sink. I still hope that if she gets over May she may last a long time"

Letter to Ellen Nussey, c. 12 and 14th May 1849

read more on the weblog Bronte weather

Pictures from blogs with information about the Bronte Sisters

Anna Claire Vollers weblog

More on the blog:Top Withens and the Bronte Bridge

Patricia Rogers weblog

Victoriana Magazine

Victoriana Magazine is a blog magazine for Victorian and 19th century style living: Fashion, Antiques, Home & Garden, and Entertaining.

With Victoriana you can experience a bit of the 19th century everyday. Victoriana is a vibrant and inspiring site that cuts through the complexities of modern life to illustrate what was beautiful in the past. Victoriana, online since 1996, captures the pleasures and traditions of an earlier period and transforms them to be relevant to today’s living.Victoriana offers extensive information about Victorian house remodeling and Victorian home decorating, 19^th century fashion and accessories, entertaining and weddings, recipes and holidays, history and lifestyles, and much more. Step back in time and enjoy the appeal of an era gone-by.

Brontë country in the Yorkshire Dales on the weblog Gruts

An Evening with Emily Brontë … - Brontë Parsonage Museum 16/11/2011

Question to my readers

Heather and me

 are sad that we cannot go

 to this event:
evening-with-emily-bronte

I was thinking:

 Maybe there is someone, 

living in te neighbourhood of the Parsonage 

who can visit this event and make pictures????? 

 I love to place them on this weblog!!!!

An unpublished Charlotte Bronte manuscript is expected to sell for between £200,000 and £300,000 at auction next month.

The Young Men’s Magazine, Number 2, was written when Charlotte was 14, and is set in Glass Town, the earliest fictional world created by the Bronte siblings.

The book contains more than 4,000 words on 19 pages, each measuring approximately 1.4in (35mm) by 2.4in (61mm).

It is dated August 1830 – 17 years before she wrote Jane Eyre – and is said to have never before been seen by scholars.

Sotheby’s said it is the most important Bronte manuscript to appear at auction in more than 30 years and is one of only a handful of such pieces remaining in private ownership.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s senior specialist in the books and manuscripts department, said: “Crafted with extraordinary care, this minute manuscript marks Charlotte Bronte’s first burst of creativity and, significantly, provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history’s great literary minds.”

Charlotte was a prolific writer as a child and later claimed that she had written more before the age of 13 than afterwards.

As an adult, her debut novel Jane Eyre was an immediate best-seller when it was published in 1847. Two years later the publication of Shirley cemented her reputation, and the publication of Villette in 1853 enhanced her celebrity.

Charlotte Bronte died in March 1855 in the early stages of pregnancy, only nine months after her marriage to her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

The manuscript is being sold at the auction of English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations on December 15.

keighleynews.co.uk

An Evening with Emily Brontë … - Brontë Parsonage Museum 16/11/2011

Wednesday 16th & Wednesday 23rd November 2011 , 7.00pm
To coincide with the release of the new film version of Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, the Brontë Parsonage Museum is dedicating an evening to all things Emily. 

The evening will include a guided tour of the museum focusing on Emily at the Parsonage, and a visit to the museum Library for a rare opportunity to find out more about Emily through the manuscripts and artefacts held in the museum’s collections. 

Wine and canapés will also be served.
Numbers are strictly limited. To be sure of a place, early booking is recommended. Bookings can be made for 16th or 23rd November. Tickets are £16. To book, please contact Sonia Boocock, Brontë Parsonage Museum, 01535 640192/ sonia.boocock@bronte.org.uk

Tel. 01535 640192/ 
E-Mail sonia.boocock@bronte.org.uk

View from the Parsonage, Haworth

     View from the Parsonage, Haworth. Photograph: Denis Thorpe

Read more on: guardian.co.uk/charlotte-bronte-jane-eyre

Ours is supposed to be the age of instantaneity, where books can be downloaded in a few seconds and reputations created overnight. But the Victorians could be speedy, too, and there's no more striking example of instant celebrity than Jane Eyre.

Graveyard

I found this picture and story on: dalesman.co.uk
There’s something really appealing – to me anyway – about autumn in a graveyard. A towering shadowy church, Gothic tombstones, the reds, browns and yellows, crunching leaves beneath my feet and shafts of weakened sunlight highlighting the unusual. Perhaps being brought up on Hammer House of Horror movies has left a mark on me. I was creeping around the graveyard at Haworth church this week – nothing to do with any Boris Karloff fantasy I might have, but for an article on how the Brontes spent Christmas (to appear in our December issue) – and took this photo.

The Brontë sisters are always our contemporaries

The Brontës have transformed themselves over a century and a half, even if the ongoing fascination perhaps says more about us than it does about them. A tiny teenage manuscript of Charlotte’s is about to be sold, its value estimated at between £200,000 and £300,000, which is as good a measure of enthusiasm as any. And the release of new film versions of her and her sister Emily’s best-known books – Cary Fukanaga’s Jane Eyre and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights – offers an opportunity to think about how we have remade these books in our own image.

They were not always equally popular. Jane Eyre was an immediate bestseller, its vivid theatrical style making it a favourite to be turned into stage melodrama – as happened within a year of its publication in 1847. It has been filmed 20 times, from the very earliest days of the cinema.  Wuthering Heights was slower to make its way. Read more: .telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/The-Bronte-sisters-are-always-our-contemporaries.html