The Brontë Cabinet - A review

The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects
by Deborah Lutz (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company, May 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0393240085

Deborah Lutz has managed to combine a 'chatty', conversational way of writing with solidly scholarly background and research. The Brontë Cabinet is a wholly entertaining read, yet thoroughly researched and incredibly enlightening. New Brontëites will find some of the facts about the Brontës interesting and old Brontëites will refresh their memories and - we are pretty sure - learn new things if not about the Brontës themselves, then surely about the period they lived in.

So Deborah Lutz takes each object and writes a chapter around it, telling us both the Brontë story and the Victorian story, putting the Brontës firmly in the period they lived in but with which they aren't always really associated both because they lived in the earlier part of it and because their tastes and style tend to be reminiscent of an earlier period. And yet, looking at their belongings and their way of life, it's clear that they can't have been anything else. The Brontës were Victorians through and through.
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