The most haunting characters in literature revealed

Top ten most haunting female characters from dramatised literature	Top ten most haunting male characters from dramatised literature
Miss Havisham – Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (21%)	Heathcliff – Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (21%)
2. The ghost – Woman in Black, Susan Hill (14%)	2. Count Dracula – Dracula, Bram Stoker (18%)
3. Lady Macbeth – Macbeth, William Shakespeare (13%)	3. Jack Torrance – The Shining, Stephen King (13%)
4. White Witch – Chronicles of Narnia, C S Lewis (11%)	4. Mr Rochester – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (12%)
5. Annie Wilkes – Misery, Stephen King (10%)	5. Alex – A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (10.2%)
6. Mrs De Winter – Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier (9%)	6. Frankenstein’s Monster – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (10.15%)
7. Nurse Ratched – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (8%)	7. Pennywise the clown – It, Stephen King (9%)
8. Mrs Coulter – Northern Lights, Phillip Pullman (6%)	8. President Coriolanus Snow – The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (7%)
9. Miss Trunchball – Matilda, Roald Dahl (6%)	9. Caliban – The Tempest, William Shakespeare (6%)
10. Miss Hardbroom – The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy (1%)	10. Kevin - We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver (5%)

 

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Record of Charlotte Brontë’s Scottish jaunt in the visitors’ book at Abbotsford, Walter Scott’s home

Helen MacEwan writes:

On a trip to Edinburgh on 10-11 May I met up with Kathleen Shortt, the Brontë Society’s representative for Scotland. We went south to the border country for a tour of Sir Walter Scott’s house, Abbotsford, by Malcolm Morrison, a BS member who lives in Melrose and works at the house as a volunteer guide. Scott’s literary creations were of course hugely influential on the Brontës, as on so many other writers of the period; in 1834, advising her friend Ellen Nussey on which novels to read, Charlotte Brontë had written: ‘For fiction read Scott alone – all novels after him are worthless’.  Abbotsford, his amazing and highly personal creation in stone, was to ruin him financially, though he eventually managed to write his way out of debt. We were privileged to have not only a private tour of the house with Malcolm but also a private viewing of the visitors’ book that covers 1850. The book, whose binding is in too fragile a condition to allow it to be permanently displayed, was brought out for us by Sandra Mackenzie, the Heritage and Learning Officer, and opened at the page where Charlotte Brontë and George Smith signed it during their visit to Abbotsford on 5 July of that year along with 17 other visitors. Charlotte had joined her publisher for a couple of days’ sight-seeing in Scotland when he and his sister went to fetch their younger brother home from his school in Edinburgh for the summer vacation. She was originally to have joined the Smiths for a longer tour of Scotland but her time with them was curtailed, probably because of the disapproval of Ellen and others of her jaunts with the unmarried Smith. Despite the brevity of her Scottish trip Charlotte waxed lyrical in letters about her glimpse of Edinburgh, Abbotsford and Melrose, telling her friend Laetitia Wheelwright that ‘Edinburgh compared to London is like a vivid page of history compared to a huge dull treatise on Political Economy – and as to Melrose and Abbotsford the very names possess music and magic.’

bronteparsonage

 

Photo: Helen MacEwan, Malcolm Morrison (Abbotsford guide), Kathleen Shortt

 

 

Pencil sketch of a ring ouzel

On this day in 1829, Emily made this pencil sketch of a ring ouzel. Native to upland parts of northern England and Scotland, Emily had likely encountered ring ouzels on the moors near her home.

Bronte Parsonage Museum

 

 

Discovering Literature

This is a list of the more than sixty Brontë-related entries to be found there (including Emily Brontë's diary, 1837, for instance):

bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians

Discovering Literature

 

Eric Mitchell at the Parsonage

Look who came to visit on 1940s weekend! We were thrilled to see Eric Mitchell at the Parsonage yesterday - Eric's father, Harold Mitchell, was custodian here during the Second World War, and Eric was the last baby to be born at the Parsonage! Bronte Parsonage Museum

Great pictures of a candlelit Parsonage

A candlelit tour of the Parsonage, and the chance to see items from the collection up close with Collections Manager, Ann Dinsdale
Bronte Parsonage Museum