“Villette! Villette!” wrote George Eliot. “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre.

Charlotte Brontë wrote not one but two masterpieces. Most readers know Jane Eyre. Even non-readers feel they know it, because they have seen a film version, or just because it is a part of our common culture. But Villette, Brontë’s last and – to my mind – greatest novel, is less popular, perhaps because it is so uncompromising and so original. It is high time it was recognised as the blazing work it is. Reading it you enter an area of experience – of passion and disappointment and the violent return of the repressed – that has seldom been so lucidly articulated.

It is also an astonishing piece of writing, a book in which phantasmagorical set pieces alternate with passages of minute psychological exploration, and in which Brontë’s marvellously flexible prose veers between sardonic wit and stream-of-consciousness, in which the syntax bends and flows and threatens to dissolve completely in the heat of madness, drug-induced hallucination and desperate desire.

First page of the manuscript of Villette

thebrusselsbrontegroup/Villette

 

“Villette! Villette!” wrote George Eliot. “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power.” It was unlike the strong-minded Eliot to be reduced to exclamation marks and vague talk of a “something”. But Villette was so innovative for its time, and remains to this day so potently strange, that critics have struggled to find words to describe it. “There are so few books, and so many volumes,” wrote Eliot’s partner GH Lewes. “Among the few stands Villette.” Lewes thought it was unique. Lesser authors were “reverberating the vague noise of others”. Brontë spoke out boldly in a voice that was all her own.

Villette is the most autobiographical of Brontë’s novels. In it, she elaborates on the true story of her unrequited love for a married schoolmaster called Constantin Héger. In 1842 Brontë, then aged 26, went with her sister Emily to Brussels. There they worked as student-teachers in the Hégers’ school with the intention of perfecting their French, and returning home to set up a school of their own.

Emily, miserably homesick for the Yorkshire moors, left first. Charlotte stayed for two years, and subsequently wrote Monsieur Héger a series of letters to which he, probably in obedience to his wife, never replied. Brontë saw him as her intellectual mentor, but the yearning tone of her letters, and the two novels for which her Belgian experiences provided her with raw material, make it obvious that she was in love with him. Read more:  telegraph/Why-Villette-is-better-than-Jane-Eyre

Bloggers writing about Vilette:

jointheroad/villette-read-long-week-7-chapters
kimberly eve musings
the sleepless reader

 

2014. A Brontë Year

After 2011 when two Brontë film adaptations were premiered followed two years (2012, 2013) dominated by the frenzy of mash-up novels, young adult revisitations and the latest erotic retellings under the shadow of the fifty shades, everything suggests that this will be a quiet year in the Brontë front.

The big screen news will probably spin around the Clothworkers Films production of a Brontë biopic initially scheduled for 2016 (to coincide with the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë's birth).We are pretty sure that this year will bring some news about the cast and crew that will be delivered through its active Twitter and Facebook accounts and its quite indefatigable communication strategy.

January will also bring a collector's limited edition set of  Wuthering Heights 1967 for Region 2 combined with a hardback illustrated book under the title The Brontës: Their Lives and Works. An edition of 1000 copies released by Front Row Books.

Read more on: 2014. A Brontë Year

Happy New Year!

 

Happy New Year!

 

 Thank you all for visiting my blog.

George Whitehead's Journal

I read this on: nillyhall/love-and-more-in-mist:

Read more on this blog. There are also beautiful photographes on this blog.

 

I'd spent the morning looking through an old book, picked up recently in the local Oxfam shop;

"Victorian Ouseburn - George Whitehead's Journal"

George must have been a plain-speaking chap - intent on recording facts as he found them, with little emotion or detail, he notes;

 

 

"Robinsons set off for Scarboro' Friday July 4th 1845."

"Robinsons came back from Scarboro' Friday Aug 8th 1845,"

"Miss Lydia Robinson made her exit with Henry Roxby (a play actor) Monday morning, Oct 20th. They went to Gretna Green and got married that night. She was a fortnight turned 20 years that day. A bad job 1845."

("Finished shearing beans and peas, Oct 20th 1845.")

Then the penny dropped and I remembered who the Robinsons were!

A clergyman's family living at Thorpe Green House, near Little Ouseburn, the Robinsons had employed Anne Bronte as a governess between 1840 and 1845, and also Branwell Bronte, as a tutor to their son, from 1843. George Whitehead's diary does not mention Anne the governess, nor her brother Branwell, though he records Robinson family trips to Scarborough which it is known that Anne enjoyed.

"Rev. E Robinson was interred, June 5th. There was about 60 Odd Fellows followed him. His Mrs and Misses Elizabeth and Mary and the young master followed him to the church 1846."

Rumour has it that Branwell hoped that the newly widowed Mrs Robinson would marry him, but this was not to be...

 

 

"Mrs Robinsons labouring men, 4 in number, namely John Abbey, Thos. Brigg, Richard Bowser Jr. and Geo. Kaye paid off Aug 1st.""Mrs Robinson's land let about July 25th 1846."
"Mrs Robinson's sale at Thorpe Green. Farming stock and implements. Feb 12th 1847"
"Mrs Robinson had a sale of oak wood at the Black Swan York March 2nd 1847"
"All Robinsons left Thorpe Green March 3rd. Mrs went among her relations that day and the young master and the young ladies were at Lodgings at York until March 10th and they went southward to their Mamma. It will be a bad job for many people them leaving Thorpe Green 1847."

 

George Whitehead's Journal

mick-armitage

 George was born in 1824 and lived in the village of Little Ouseburn in North Yorkshire.  He was a joiner, wheelwright and farmer.  He wrote up an account of his observations, both personal and also from newpapers as a series of journals from around 1840 to 1909.  His writings provide a fascinating insight into the day to day  life of the 19th century, including accounts of the movements and activities of people in his community.

 

George's Journals are available thanks to Helier Hibbs, who discovered the journals, edited them and then published the Jounals as a book in 1990.

georgewhiteheadsjournal

The British Library has made scans of historic illustrated material available on its Flickr pages.

The British Library has made scans of historic illustrated material available on its Flickr pages. You can search the British Library Flickr collection.
Each image is accompanied with a full citation

 

You can find the Biritsh Library photostream by clicking here.
You can read Jonathan Jones's musings on digitisation on the Guardian website here.
tale-piecestheblogofthebewicksociety

 

flickr/photos/britishlibrary/

flickr/search/haworth

Haworth Old Hall

Burried deep beneath Haworth Old Hall, leading off from the cellars of this 400 four hundred-year old Tudor manor house, are two elaborate tunnels each nearly a mile in length. Once used as an escape route, one of the tunnels connects directly to Haworth Parish Church.

 

During the 1600s, The Emmott family owned most of the property in Haworth including what is now known as Haworth Old Hall. The Emmotts were recusants (those who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church and did not attend Church of England services) who kept up the old faith in the church and protected the priest and people from persecution during penal times.

During times of religious persecution, the Emmott family would use the tunnels beneath the house to offer the nonconformist people of Haworth a safe passage of escape from the forces of the Church of England. The last of the Emmott line to remain at the manor house was General Emmott Rawdon, also known as Green-Emmott-Rawdon. The association of the family and the Old Hall continues to this day among the characters described by the Bronte sisters in their novels.

This fine example of an old hall house, also known as a communal dwelling house, court house or resting place, stands at the bottom of the Church Gate, no doubt on the site of the original manor house. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Haworth Old Hall as it now stands was erected as a collection of rooms that led off the main entrance hall, which itself was a most magnificent room with polished oak rafters.

By the 1870s the Old Hall had been divided into two cottages before being reconverted into one residence at the beginning of the 20th Century when the ancient hall became the dining area, revealing two magnificent stone fire places that had previously been hidden. hawortholdhall

HaworthOldHall
bazzasoft/ Emmott Family

On this day

On this day in 1812 Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell were married at Guiseley Church.

 

 

On this day in 1843 Charlotte Bronte received a Diploma from the Pensionnat at Brussels.