Undercliffe Cemetery adds Bronte nanny to list of Bradford Worthies

NANCY De Garrs was quite a ‘celebrity’ in Bradford Workhouse 

While other inmates sat on wooden benches, Nancy had her own armchair. There was much interest in the old lady who had been the Bronte family’s nanny, and she was visited by journalists keen to interview the last person to know the famous literary sisters.

Nancy loved to talk about her time with the Brontes. But with old age, and poverty, came a fear of ending up in a pauper's grave. When Nancy told the Pall Mall Gazette it was her last request to avoid such a fate, the London newspaper appealed for public donations so she could have a decent burial. It was taken up by other newspapers, including the New York Times. How much was raised isn’t clear. A 'typo' in a Manchester newspaper meant that some of the money was sent to Bedford workhouse, instead of Bradford...

And when Nancy died in 1886, aged 82, she was buried at Undercliffe Cemetery, in an unmarked grave costing just a guinea. For over 130 years she has laid in the weed-choked plot. Now she has been added to a list of ‘Bradford Worthies’ buried at the cemetery, and finally she is to have a headstone. “Nancy has been hidden all these years. We want to acknowledge her part in Bronte history,” says Allan Hillary, chairman of the Friends of Undercliffe Cemetery which is appealing for help to raise £3,000 for a headstone and to clear the area around the grave. Allan hopes it will become part of the Bronte Trail, attracting more visitors to the historic cemetery. 

Emily Bronte Song Cycle by The Unthanks.

Promo video for the Emily Bronte Song Cycle by The Unthanks, available to buy on record from www.the-unthanks.com and to experience at the Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorks Dec 2018 - March 2019

Happy 200th Birthday To Emily Bronte

The fireplace at Thornton Parsonage by which Emily was born

Read all: annebronte/happy-200th-birthday-to-emily-bronte

As today marks the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë, a woman still celebrated and loved across the world. It’s understandable, therefore, that the media is taking a fresh look at Emily and her legacy, but it is quite clear that the Guardian’s intent was not to praise Emily Brontë but to bury her. .theguardian/emily-bronte-strange-cult-wuthering-heights-romantic-novel. The choice of Kathryn Hughes to write the appraisal would surely seem perverse otherwise, for here is a woman who admits freely that she dislikes Emily Brontë and that she has never finished her only novel, the sublime ‘Wuthering Heights’. It is the equivalent of a restaurant critic reviewing a meal they have never tasted, or a sports correspondent reporting on the World Cup final after following it via a Twitter feed, but worse than this are the factual inaccuracies and strange conclusions that litter the article, and it’s this that has prompted me to respond in print. 

I have loved Emily Brontë’s writing since I discovered ‘Wuthering Heights’ atop the reading list I’d been given in my first week at University. I was blown away by the book’s power and urgency, and a life long love affair with the Brontës and all their works had me in a vice like grip. I was happy to be held there, and in subsequent years my admiration for Emily, Charlotte and Anne has only grown, which is why my latest biography, ‘Emily Brontë – A Life In 20 Poems,’ was a sheer pleasure to research and write.

It was somewhat surprising therefore to read the Guardian’s assertion that ‘nearly all Emily Brontë’s biographers and scholars over the past century have been women.’ This is to discount seminal works by the likes of Edward Chitham, but worse than this it seems that the writer is using the championing of Emily by women writers to belittle her achievements, rather than seeing this as a cause for celebration. Visitors to Haworth are also sure to notice that women and men equally are drawn to the three literary sisters, so the Guardian’s claims seem either dispiriting or disingenuous.

Read all: annebronte/happy-200th-birthday-to-emily-bronte

Something Terrific: Emily Brontë’s 200 Years.

Very interesting article. Read all on: sydneyreviewofbooks
in the article also a very beautiful photograph of the Haworth Churchyard. Photo: Simon Warner

1818. In that year the illustrious novelist Walter Scott discovered a box of lost Crown Jewels hidden in Edinburgh Castle and was rewarded with the title of baronet. Percy Bysshe Shelley pseudonymously published his sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ and Mary Shelley anonymously published her novel Frankenstein, which was influenced, her husband notes in the Preface, by the physician Erasmus Darwin’s experiments. Frankenstein was reviewed that year by Walter Scott. Wars of independence and colonialism were being fought around the globe. Karl Marx was born in Germany and would one day be a great reader of English literature. He was deeply affected by P. B. Shelley’s radicalism, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones was his favourite novel, he considered Scott’s Old Mortality a masterpiece, and by the early 1850s he was lauding Wuthering Heights for its condemnation of the middle classes. In 1818 Darwin’s grandson Charles was nine years old, a directionless boy (his father thought) who consumed Byron, loved books, and would go on to ‘read and reread until they could be read no more’ the novels of Scott, Jane Austen and Mrs Gaskell. He read Jane Eyre; we can assume he’d also read Wuthering Heights and would have recognised the author of this story of ferocious generational struggle as a kindred spirit. It’s not known if Emily Brontë ever saw a copy of The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), which foretold On the Origin of Species (1859); I like to think she did. And if not that book, then perhaps other works of scientific discovery, Georg Forster’s classic A Voyage Round the World (1777), or George Anson’s Voyage Around the World in the Years 1740-1744 (1748), as it’s known there was a copy in the library at nearby Ponden Hall to which the Brontës had access, or indeed anything by or about the Arctic explorer Sir William Edward Parry, whom Emily chose as one of her earliest heroes in the games she played with her siblings. Her Gondal poems were set in fantasy lands in the North and South Pacific, conceiving for the southern island bright Eden skies, palm trees alongside cedars and beeches, and ‘tropic prairies bright with flowers’.  The Brontë Parsonage Museum has a family copy of Goldsmith’s Modern and Ancient Geography, with Gondal place names added to the index, most likely by Emily. In her own imagination she was well travelled. Her French teacher thought that she possessed the disciplined mind and superior will of a great navigator.

Postbox tribute to mark Brontë anniversary.

A special postbox paying tribute to author Emily Brontë has been put up in Yorkshire to celebrate the bicentenary of her birth. The novelist was born on July 30, 1818 in the village of Thornton on the outskirts of Bradford.

And with the help of students from Thornton Primary School, Royal Mail unveiled the postbox in Market Street in the village yesterday. It features quotes from some of the author’s most famous works, including Wuthering Heights and her poetry. Mark Street, head of campaigns at Royal Mail, said: “As one of the guardians of the written word, we relish the opportunity to celebrate the life and times of Britain’s most treasured writers. “The incredible impact that Emily Brontë’s work has had on our culture is undeniable, and we are delighted to honour her work in this way.”

Rebecca Yorke, head of communications at The Brontë Society, said: “It’s perfect that Royal Mail has chosen to commemorate the bicentenary of Emily Brontë in this way.

“Correspondence played an important part in the lives of Emily and her sisters. 

“Their letters have made a significant contribution to what we know about them. “Emily spent most of her life at the Parsonage in Haworth, but we’re delighted that Thornton, where Emily was born, is also taking part in the bicentenary celebrations. We hope residents and visitors alike will enjoy the commemorative postbox.” 

.yorkshirepost

thetelegraphandargus

Cults, Misfits, and a Hot Mess: Is Emily “the Other Brontë?”

A few days ago I began writing this piece about Emily Brontë’s status as the so-called “other Brontë”, intending to post it in time for her 200th birthday on 30th July. However, the day after I began drafting the piece, an article entitled “The strange cult of Emily Brontë and the ‘hot mess’ of Wuthering Heights” written by Kathryn Hughes for The Guardian appeared and addressed the same issue, but rather than asking questions, the article made massive and derogatory assumptions about everything from Emily herself to Wuthering Heights, Brontë fans, and female academics in addition to a very strange comparison between Brontë and American poet Sylvia Plath. Even several days later, I’m not really sure what the point of Hughes’ article was other than to attack a beloved author in the run up to the celebration of her bicentenary.
Read all: brontebabeblog

Lyricism of Emily’s work, landscape, and adaptations, and panel sessions.

The Brontë Society’s 2018 conference will celebrate the life and work of Emily Brontë in her bicentenary year. Variously described as visionary, determinedly private, and singular, Emily is the most enigmatic of the Brontë siblings, and this conference affords us opportunities to delve deeper into the complexities of her personality and her limited but extremely influential literary output. 

We’re delighted to announce three keynote speakers: Professor Stevie Davies, novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian, who has published four books on Emily Brontë; Professor John Bowen, Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of York, and contributor to BBC2's Being the Brontes, and most recently Radio 4’s In Our Time, discussing Wuthering Heights; and Dr Hila Shachar, a member of the Centre for Adaptations at De Montfort University, whose research focuses on the adaptation of literary works and cultural afterlives. 

The keynotes will address, respectively, the lyricism of Emily’s work, landscape, and adaptations, and panel sessions will engage with a broad range of topics. Full programme details will be released in March.
 
The location for this year’s conference is spectacular York, a city steeped in ancient history, and renowned for its exquisite architecture, quaint cobbled streets, and iconic York Minster.
The conference venue is the elegant 4-star York Marriott Hotel, located just outside the city centre, with views over the historic York Racecourse.bronte-200/emily-bronte-a-peculiar-music 

Emily Bronte as an oddball?

The Guardian reviews the book Emily Brontë Reappraised by Claire O’Callaghan. 

"Two hundred years after her birth Emily Brontë is still remembered as an oddball, a people-hater and the weirdest of three weird sisters"

I myself never thought of Emily Bronte as an oddball and the weirdest of three weird sisters. So I don't really need a book that rehabilitates the reputation of Emily Bronte. I am curieus what the #metoo movement is going to make of Heathcliff. I think this book about Emily Bronte fits into the spirit of the times. Read The Bronte Myth- Lucasta Miller/.theguardian and you understand what I mean. 

Two hundred years after her birth Emily Brontë is still remembered as an oddball, a people-hater and the weirdest of three weird sisters. But a book published this week aims to rehabilitate the reputation of the author of Wuthering Heights, one of the greatest novels ever written: she may have been shy and reserved but she was not strange and should be seen as a woman ahead of her time, the academic Claire O’Callaghan argues. O’Callaghan said Brontë’s reputation was entirely carved out by others, a lot of it based on the writings of Charlotte, who was responding to criticism of her sisters Emily and Anne. “She adopted the strategy of appealing for pity by presenting her sisters as a bit weird and a bit strange, people who did not really know what they were doing,” said O’Callaghan. Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte embellished the stories even further. “Those founding images have been extended and reworked and dramatised and amplified, they have become mythic up until the present really.” O’Callaghan said Emily had been portrayed in many ways, usually negative. Sometimes she was “a staid, old-fashioned, people-hating spinster who roamed about the Yorkshire moors alone with her dog” or “a painfully shy and socially awkward girl-woman who was sick whenever she left home” or “she’s a stubborn and defiant woman who willingly withheld assorted physical and mental ailments, or an ethereal soul too fragile to endure the real world”.

She said the myths were damaging. “They perpetuate this idea she was weird and different and strange and other in a way that is quite hostile.” O’Callaghan said it was true Emily was shy, or reserved, and craved solitude and enjoyed getting out the house walking on the moors with her dog Keeper, a large mastiff. But this did not make her odd.

“Today when we think about character traits and personality traits we take a different approach to things, we try to accommodate and understand differences or social awkwardness or anxieties or just different ways of being. We try not to stigmatise people.”

O’Callaghan’s book also explores how Emily might fit in today, arguing she would be more at home in a more accepting, tolerant, feminist society.

Brontë’s only novel was Wuthering Heights, the violent and passionate story of the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff.

O’Callaghan said the novel was still seen as a love story and that too needs re-examining. “I think it is about a lot more and I think that love story is quite a damaging one … I think it can be read as a cautionary tale against damaging romance and violent romance.”

Heathcliff is clearly a horrible man “yet he is often read as the archetypal anti-hero. I really question that word hero. He is just vile from the outset.”

In the era of Time’s Up and #MeToo, O’Callaghan, a lecturer in English at Loughborough University, said it was a good time to re-evaluate. “Maybe the time’s up on Heathcliff … we need to take off the romantic blinkers and we need to look at him more critically.” (Mark Brown)

Sisters coming home.

Bronte Parsonage Museum

Look out for us on BBC Look North (Yorkshire) at 6.30pm this evening as we welcome Branwell's portrait of his sisters back to Haworth.

THE BRONTË Sisters are coming home to Haworth in the shape of their famous portrait.

The painting by Branwell Brontë is the only known surviving portrait of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

The National Portrait Gallery is loaning the picture to the Brontë Parsonage Museum for visitors to examine, from June 1 to August 31.

The painting was painted by Branwell in 1834 and is known as the ‘pillar portrait’ due to the central column he painted to obscure his own figure. 

The painting was kept by Charlotte’s husband, Mr Nicholls, and after his death it was discovered folded up in the top of the wardrobe.

It was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery 1914, and this will be its first return to the Parsonage since 1984.

thetelegraphandargus

Sew Near - Sew Far.

Sew Near - Sew Far, a land art commission created by textile artist Lynn Setterington and over one hundred local people, was displayed along the Brontë Way, West Yorkshire, during the autumn of 2017 as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s five-year programme celebrating the bicentenaries of the Brontës’ births.
 
Sew Near - Sew Far, a collaboration between celebrated textile artist Lynn Setterington and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, saw a large-scale textile artwork at three sites on the Brontë Way; each one celebrating the famous signatures of the literary sisters.
 
Artist Lynn Setterington said: “Signatures are an important marker of identity and the Brontë sisters famously used pseudonyms at their time of writing to disguise the fact they were women.
 
“I’m creating an artwork for the Brontë Parsonage Museum exploring the adopted and real signatures of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. I’ll be working with local people to develop the artworks and inviting them to add their own signatures to the piece.
 
“We’re also creating a film documenting the whole process, which will be shown later in the year. I’ll be collaborating with community groups, volunteers and local people in West Yorkshire to create Sew Near - Sew Far and capturing the process is an important part of the artwork.” bronte.org.uk/contemporary-arts/sew-near-sew-far-by-lynn-setterington