zaterdag 23 juni 2012
vrijdag 22 juni 2012
Bronte book lovers on the web
There is also a rather lovely small press miniature book:
Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor: Early Feminists by Suzanne Smith Pruchnicki. Illinois, The Brontë Press, 1999
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Given my love for the Bronte sisters classics "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights", it was a no-brainer for me when I saw these little lovelies
Not to long ago I stubmbled upon this wonderful, in depth article about the Bronte Sisters and a lost (found and recently autctioned) book by Charlotte.
maandag 18 juni 2012
Migrants to Haworth
From John Hearfield (click) ( A period after the Bronte family was living in Haworth. But interesting to know what happened some years later. And a beautiful old picture of Haworth).
Because my oldest friend lives in Haworth, I have investigated the 19thC town in some detail, including making transcripts of the 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses. Haworth is up on the moors above Keighley and is the West Riding mill town closest to the Yorkshire dales. Bleak and windswept, even now you can walk out of the town on to the moors, which would have given an illusion of familiarity to the migrants. The 1880s and 90s Heads of Households, often their wives, certainly their children, all worked at the many jobs which made up the textile trade, from washing, combing, carding and spinning the yarn, to weaving and finishing the fine worsted for which the town was famous.
Of the 51 Heads of Household who left Swaledale for the West Riding between 1881 and 1891, forty-four households - 323 people - came to Haworth. In 1881, the average age of those 323 people was just 16 - an awful lot of young children accompanied their parents and most of them were working in the mills by 1891.
zondag 17 juni 2012
Postmaster at Haworth
There is some confusion over which property on the Main St is the actual Post Office during the Brontes In the Trade Directory it states that between 1830-1857 William Hartley was Postmaster at Haworth, a map of Haworth 1853 clearly shows the property in the photograph as the Post Office.
In 1861 Edwin Feather became Postmaster, the post Office located to another property, the Brontes were all dead by this time.
To confuse matters a book by Claude Meeker "Haworth home of the Brontes" (1895) claims a Samuel Feather as being the Postmaster. There is no known record of him as a Postmaster or living in Haworth. It has to be noted that at the time this book was published there was considerable interest in the Brontes and all sorts of claims were made. Haworth-village
Haworth
In the village, the old post office is now a general stationers run by Margaret Hartley, whose family have been in business in the village for more than 350 years.
'My great-great-great-grandad was the postmaster and served the Brontes,' says Margaret, 74. 'And this is the counter that the girls passed their manuscripts over.'
'The girls' is how the people of Haworth refer to Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, as if they were family.
Leaving behind the parsonage and the post office and heading along a steep footpath into the hills, the church bells (curate Bronte's old church, but rebuilt) and the steam engines running on the Keighley and Worth Valley railway are all I can hear.
The path is riddled with nettles - I imagine Emily's long skirts would have saved her from stings. As it winds around the hillside and narrows, the fields on the high side are replaced by rough moorland. Then slowly, the fields on the low side fade away too, and either side is no longer luxuriant green but browned, waist-high bracken, tough grass and blushing heather.
She took the natural features around her home and worked them into her novel, so every pile of stones holds a heavy meaning: the real-life Ponden Kirk became fictional Peniston Crag, where Cathy ponders her troubled life, and Ponden Hall became Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family that Cathy marries into, tearing her away from her true love.
