Rarities to go on show to commemorate Elizabeth Gaskell

First editions of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels and a selection of the author’s letters are to go on show this week at her former home to mark 150 years since her death.

The celebrated novelist died on November 12 1865 at the age of 55, and lived at 84 Plymouth Grove in Manchester which reopened to the public in 2014 as the attraction Elizabeth Gaskell's House.
One of the Victorian era's most iconic authors, Gaskell is known for her works of social realism featuring strong female characters including 'North and South', 'Cranford' and 'Mary Barton' as well as her biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë.
First editions of her novels which feature her annotations, a music book with a note from her husband William to Elizabeth, and her own notes on how to cure a range of ailments in cats - featuring copious amounts of porridge, from Central Library's Gaskell Collection are among the works which will be shown at her former home.

Visitors can also explore the home of the author and learn more about her private and public life. The event is free with the admission fee and advance booking is not required.

Archives Uncovered: The Elizabeth Gaskell Collection at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, Thursday November 12, 11am-3pm, 84 Plymouth Grove. Entry fee adults £4.95, concessions £3.95, under 16s free with tickets valid for one year.
See seven of the women who made Manchester great from Time Out. timeout/manchester

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.
Read more on: Bronteblog
 

Winifred Gérin, biographer of the Brontës

To celebrate the Brontë bicentenaries, Helen MacEwan has written a new book exploring the life of one of their most important biographers. On 21 November at Waterstones Piccadilly, she will be launching Winifred Gérin, biographer of the Brontës (publication date 15 November). Having written about the Brontës in Brussels, Helen first became interested in Gérin’s life story because of her Belgian links and her special interest in Charlotte Brontë’s Brussels period.

Winifred Gérin (1901-81) is known as the biographer who moved to Haworth to write the lives of all four Brontë siblings, literally treading in their footsteps as she researched them. But her ten years in Haworth were just part of a romantic, eventful and sometimes tragic life.

Marriage to a Belgian cellist, Eugène Gérin, took her to Paris and then, in 1939, to Brussels where the couple worked for the British Embassy. Following the German invasion of 1940 they had various hair-raising adventures in France, finally escaping to Britain where they worked for Political Intelligence. After Eugène Gérin’s death in 1945, Winifred sought consolation in writing poetry and plays until discovering both her literary vocation and second love on a fateful first visit to Haworth. 

Gérin went on to write biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell, Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Horatia Nelson. She also wrote plays about Jane Austen, Fanny Burney and Charlotte Brontë. This book is based on her letters and her unpublished memoir. bronteparsonage

Warm & sunny 1st of November.

 

twitter/MrsHaworthFox 

 

Beautiful photographes

 

Editing Elizabeth Gaskell: manuscripts and letters in the Brotherton Collection:

 

 

November 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the death of author, biographer, humanitarian and campaigner, Elizabeth Gaskell.

 

Join Dr Shirley Foster, President of the Gaskell Society, to explore the Brotherton Collection's Gaskell manuscripts for insight into her life and work.

 

Dr Foster will talk about the how these literary manuscripts informed her work editing the Penguin edition of Sylvia's Lovers.

eventbrite.co.uk/lunchtime-talks-editing-elizabeth-gaskell

"May have " and so much "simply".

I didn't read the new biography ""Charlotte Bronte"" from Claire Harman. Off course not, because it is only two days ago it is published. But I am a little surprised by the reactions I am reading. For instance this one:

From: Charlotte Brontë: A Life by Claire Harmann review – a well-balanced, unshowy biography
theguardian

In the pragmatic 1990s, Juliet Barker worked hard to clear away the consequences of Gaskell’s well-meaning gothicisation by rebuilding the Brontës’ story on solid historical grounds. In particular Barker challenged her portrayal of Patrick Brontë as a storybook ogre. Charlotte too was transformed from a sequestered tragic heroine into a chippy spinster who carefully stage-managed her rise to literary fame by persistently pushing herself and her work, even the duff stuff, before the public.

As a highly experienced biographer, Harman has too much integrity to suggest that this idea of her subject as a proto-modernist is entirely fresh. Nor does she even hint that she has uncovered any new documentary sources about her. Instead, she wisely concentrates on rounding out and deepening aspects of the author’s life that have been previously scanted or skewed. Particularly fine is Harman’s reading of how the tortuous, sexless love affair between Héger and Brontë could ever have been allowed to reach such heights – or depths. Previous biographers have tended either to castigate Héger as a married flirt who led Brontë on, or they have painted her as a disordered spinster, randy with celibacy, quite capable of spitefully destroying a man who refused to make love to her. (...)

Harman, by contrast, suggests that what we may be looking at is primarily a cultural misunderstanding. Héger routinely lavished his pupils with a repertoire of kisses, pats and affectionate glances. Brontë, raised with brisk Yorkshire non-showiness, may simply have misread pseudo-parental tenderness as a special favour. What’s more Mme Héger, far from being as sly and vengeful as her fictional avatar Mme Beck, was simply a sensible businesswoman who realised the damage to her school’s reputation if gossip emerged about a tendresse between her husband and the plain, nervy English governess. Deciding not to respond to the stream of yearning, abasing letters that Brontë wrote once she had returned to Haworth wasn’t a vicious move on the Hegers’ part, but simply self-preservation. Read all:  theguardian

I am an admirer of the biography of Juliet Barker and I really don't recognize that I ever thought:

Charlotte is transformed from a sequestered tragic heroine into a chippy spinster who carefully stage-managed her rise to literary fame by persistently pushing herself and her work, even the duff stuff, before the public.

"May have " and so much "simply" in:

Harman, by contrast, suggests that what we may be looking at is primarily a cultural misunderstanding. Héger routinely lavished his pupils with a repertoire of kisses, pats and affectionate glances. Brontë, raised with brisk Yorkshire non-showiness, may simply have misread pseudo-parental tenderness as a special favour.

What’s more Mme Héger, far from being as sly and vengeful as her fictional avatar Mme Beck, was simply a sensible businesswoman who realised the damage to her school’s reputation if gossip emerged about a tendresse between her husband and the plain, nervy English governess. Deciding not to respond to the stream of yearning, abasing letters that Brontë wrote once she had returned to Haworth wasn’t a vicious move on the Hegers’ part, but simply self-preservation. theguardian

Is everything really that "simply"?

Mr. Heger's most personal and thoughtful gift yet...........

On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth, Penguin is publishing the definitive biography of this extraordinary novelist, by acclaimed literary biographer Claire Harman.

 

This beautifully-produced, landmark biography is essential reading for every fan of the Brontë family's writing, from Jane Eyre to Wuthering Heights. It is a uniquely intimate and complex insight into one of Britain's best loved writers. penguin.co.uk

  

I am a little bit surprised. A definite biography?

 

It is a nice idea to publish a new biography on the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth, but "" definitive biography ""? After the excellent biographies of Juliet Barker and Rebecca Fraser?  Is it possible to write better biographies then these? I wonder, is there something new in this biography we didn't hear of?

 

New to me is what I am reading in an article of Claire Harman in the telegraph.co.uk:

 

One Friday afternoon, 11 days before the end of term, Heger came into the classroom where Charlotte was teaching and handed her a small object wrapped carefully in a piece of thin writing paper. She opened it as soon as he left. Inside the zigzag wrapping was a small piece of pale wood, too thin to be anything other than crating. It was a piece of Napoleon’s coffin, or, rather, since Napoleon was famously coffined in tin within mahogany within lead, possibly a piece of the outer casings in which the great man’s remains had been brought back to France three years earlier, under the command of his son, the Prince de Joinville, whose former secretary, Joachim-Joseph Lebel, was Heger’s friend and principal of the Athénée. Out of the fog of disregard, Heger had reached out to her with his most personal and thoughtful gift yet, a relic at once to be revered for its connections and regarded with a touch of pleasant mutual cynicism, a continuation of their conversation about the emperor and his British nemesis, and a reminder of her triumphant essay on the subject; a small gift which could be slipped into her hand without fuss, which Madame Heger would never notice, and which, above all, was a token of her abiding place in his thoughts. While the girls were still busy, Charlotte wrote on the spread-out wrapper the exact coordinates of place and time of this precious new possession: “August 4th 1843 – Brussels – Belgium/ 1 o’clock pm/ Monsieur Heger has just been into the 1st Class/ and given me this relic – he bought it from/ his intimate friend M. Lebel.”

 

On the website of the Bronte Parsonage Museum I find this information

Object number	BS20a
Title	fragment from one of Naoleon's coffins
Description	small strip of wood that formed part of one of Napoleon's coffins; inscribed in ink in French; fair; complete; 106mm l x 21mm w x0.5 mm d;
Material	wood, ink
Dimensions	coffin fragment 106  mm coffin fragment 21  mm coffin fragment 0.5  mm bronte.adlibsoft

 

And on facebook/CharlotteBronteFans/

From the Treasure Trove: Napoleon's coffin.
The Brontes had been fascinated by both Wellington and Napoleon. On 4th August 1843, Charlotte's tutor M. Heger presented her with this fragment from Napoleon's coffin. Here, it is pictured with a note written by Charlotte, authenticating the item.

August 4th 1843 - Brussels - Belgium
1 o'clock pm...
Monsieur Heger has just been into the 1st class and given me this relic - he bought it from his intimate friend Mr Lebel.
C Bronte
Mr Lebel was the Secretary of the prince Achille Murat - The Prince de Joinville son of Louis Philippe brought over the remains of Bonaparte from St Helena.

 

I am going to search on the internet. Can I find more descriptions about this present Mr Heger has given to Charlotte Bronte? Because it seems very romantic the way it is written here. But as I always understood the romance came from one site, the site of Charlotte.

•  So I am curious why Mr. Heger gave Charlotte this present
• Did Mr. Heger had reached out to her with his most personal and thoughtful gift yet, a relic at once to be revered for its connections and regarded with a touch of pleasant mutual cynicism, a continuation of their conversation about the emperor and his British nemesis, and a reminder of her triumphant essay on the subject; a small gift which could be slipped into her hand without fuss, which Madame Heger would never notice, and which, above all, was a token of her abiding place in his thoughts.

 

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. New found portrait Charlotte Bronte.

 

I wonder when and why Claire Helman started to think this is a self-portrait of Charlotte Bronte? I was searching on the internet but I didn't find an answer till now. I wonder, because I am reading this:

The drawing was known to be by Brontë, not least because it was sketched on her school atlas. But it has remained unpublished until now, recorded without an image in the 1995 scholarly volume The Art of the Brontës as “possibly a sketch of a fellow pupil in Brussels”. It is owned by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. theguardian

So, from ""possibly a sketch of a fellow pupil in Brussels"" to ""a self portrait?"" It makes me curious, what happened?

Questions about this item?:	Please include all the starred fields in this record in your enquiry or request
*Location:	Printed Books Collection (RB1)
*Call Number:	129886
Status:	Charged
*Bookmark for This Record:	http://corsair.themorgan.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=267605
*Record ID:	267605
*Accession Number:	PML 129886
*Author/Artist:	Russell, J. C.
*Title:	Russell’s general atlas of modern geography / by J.C. Russell, geographer.
*Published/Created:	London : Baldwin & Cradock, [ca. 1836]
Description:	44 p. : 25 foldout maps ; 22 cm.
Credit:	Formerly with MA 2696; transferred from the Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, 2007.
Notes:	This volume is undated but contains the plates and index of Russell’s atlas of modern geography, London, 1836.
	Contains sketches by Charlotte Brontë, and two notes by her, one on the fixed back endpaper dated Brussels, Oct, 14, 1843, and one on the free back endpaper. See Mildred Christian, "Census of Brontë Manuscripts in the United States," part I, The Trollopian, vol. 2, no. 3, Dec. 1947, p. 197, for transcriptions.
Binding:	Half red calf.
Provenance:	Charlotte Brontë; Bonnell Brontë Collection, 1969 .
Associated Names:	Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855, former owner.
	Bonnell, Henry H. (Henry Houston), 1859-1926, former owner.
	Baldwin & Cradock, publisher.
Formatted Place:	England London.
Accompanying Material:	With one folded leaf containing the last three pages and table of contents for a Continental edition of Mme. de Staël’s novel Corinne, ou l’Italie.
Subjects:	1836.
Dept./Collection:	Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Printed Books corsair.themorgan.org atlas+charlotte+bronte Henry Houston Bonnell was a life member of the Brontë Society and collected Brontë material from the 1890s. During his lifetime this collection was considered one of the most valuable and representative in existence. He expressed a wish to see much of his collection return to Haworth and when he died in 1926 his wife carried this out. She made a further donation of the remains of his collection to the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, in the 1960s. nationalarchives.gov.uk

Charlotte Brontë sketch identified as self-portrait

Pencil sketch by Charlotte Brontë, which new research reveals is a self-portrait alongside George Richmond’s portrait. Composite: Pierpont Morgan Library/Getty Images

Experts say author made drawing, sketched on her school atlas, years before writing Jane Eyre in which protagonist draws herself in similar fashion.

A sketch of a woman’s head by Charlotte Brontë, previously thought to be of another pupil drawn while the author was at boarding school in Brussels, has been identified as a self-portrait.

The literary biographer Claire Harman said the drawing, which she suggests shows Brontë looking into a mirror, preceded the novel Jane Eyre, in which the protagonist also draws herself in a similar fashion.

The sketch dates from 1843, four years before Brontë published Jane Eyre, one of English literature’s great masterpieces, and when the young writer was suffering the agonies and insecurities of unrequited love.

The drawing was known to be by Brontë, not least because it was sketched on her school atlas.

Harman’s discovery is “massively significant” as there are only two other known lifetime portraits of Brontë.

Despite the sketch’s small size – barely 1.5 inches high – its facial details resemble those in an 1850 image by George Richmond, now in the National Portrait Gallery, although the artist was known to flatter his sitters. Read more: theguardian/charlotte-bronte-sketch-identified-self-portrait

Ann Dinsdale, collections manager of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, says that it is hard to prove the identity conclusively, but the sketch 'does certainly resemble the sitter in the Richmond portrait' dailymail./New-self-portrait-Charlotte-Bronte-discovered-drew-looking-mirror-just-like-great-heroine-Jane-Eyre

Hand-sewn patchwork quilt, believed to have been worked on by the Brontë sisters.

Many people love exploring the museum during the quieter months of the year and visitors who come between 20 November and 6 December are in for a special treat. The hand-sewn patchwork quilt, believed to have been worked on by the Brontë sisters, will be on display for the first time since the 1980s. The quilt measures 187cm by 214cm and consists of silks, taffetas, velvets and cotton which may have been taken from old Brontë dresses.

 

Child's First Tales

Child's First Tales is a collection of short stories intended for 'infant schools and little children in general'. As suited to its audience, each story is composed using mainly one syllable words and is accompanied by a simple woodblock print. This book provided rigid moral instruction for its young readers. Many of the stories feature children who behave badly and receive divine retribution (for example, those who tell lies or prefer to play than go to church); others tell of children who behave piously and are rewarded. The stories thereby reflect the belief, common to the early 19th century, that children were born sinners, predestined to hell, and must repent to save their souls. Such beliefs were underpinned by the evangelical Christianity of the author, Reverend William Carus Wilson, who was the founder and head of the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughter's School, attended by the Brontë sisters. Produced and sold cheaply, Child’s First Tales would have been affordable to a wide range of people. 

Influence in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre 

Jane Eyre critics speculate that this chapbook was used as inspiration for the ‘thin pamphlet’ titled ‘Child’s Guide’ given to Jane by Mr Brocklehurst in Chapter IV. The stories found within Child’s First Tales echo the tone and teaching of Brocklehurst’s recommended reading, ‘An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G---, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit’. ‘No. 80. – Child in a pet’, for example, is particularly resonant, beginning ‘She was in such a rage, that all at once God struck her down dead’. Instances of lying frequently appear within Child’s First Tales, too, with Wilson and Brocklehurst making the same point – that ‘“all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone”’ (Jane Eyre). bl.uk/collection/childs-first-tales-written-by-the-bront-sisters-headmaster
 

Charlotte’s Brontë great novel, Jane Eyre, was published on this day in 1847.

Charlotte’s great novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847 and she began it the previous year, while visiting Manchester with her father. Reverend Patrick Brontë was being increasingly blinded by cataracts and his daughters Emily and Charlotte had heard of a Mancunian oculist (an ophthalmologist) called Mr Wilson who might be able to help their father.

The sisters went to see Mr Wilson but he couldn’t tell without seeing Rev. Brontë’s eyes whether he could help the old man. So, in August 1846, Charlotte and her father travelled to Manchester to see the oculist, who said he could do the operation. The operation was a success but there was a period of convalescence before they could return to Haworth.

Just as her father had been having his operation, Charlotte’s first book, The Professor (which was published posthumously), was returned to her, rejected by the London publishers she had sent it to. Mrs Gaskell takes up the story in her biography:"Among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation. 

 "But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, and failure upon failure daunted her no more than him. Not only did The Professor return again to try his chance among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of care and depressing inquietude, in those grey, weary, uniform streets; where all faces, save that of her kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her, - there and then, did the brave genius begin Jane Eyre." bbc/manchester/

Brontë's determination to portray a plain yet passionate young woman who defied the stereotype of the docile and domestic Victorian feminine ideal most likely developed from her own dissatisfaction with domestic duties and a Victorian culture that discouraged women from having literary aspirations. edsitement. 

    To MESSRS. SMITH AND ELDER.  

"August 24th.
"I now send you per rail a MS. entitled Jane Eyre, a novel in three volumes, by Currer Bell. I find I cannot prepay the carriage of the parcel, as money for that purpose is not received at the small station-house where it is left. If, when you acknowledge the receipt of the MS., you would have the goodness to mention the amount charged on delivery, I will immediately transmit it in postage stamps. It is better in future to address Mr. Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Brontë, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at present. To save trouble, I enclose an envelope."

 

"Papa, I've been writing a book."

 

"Have you, my dear?" "Yes, and I want you to read it." "I am afraid it will try my eyes too much." "But it is not in manuscript: it is printed." "My dear! you've never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name. "But, papa, I don't think it will be a loss; no more will you, if you will just let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it."

George Smith
The year 1847 must be the annus mirabilis of English fiction. The manuscript of Jane Eyre reached the publisher, George Smith, in August. He began to read one Sunday morning. "The story quickly took me captive," he wrote. "Before twelve o'clock my horse came to the door but I could not put the book down… before I went to bed that night I had finished reading."

Do you remember the first time you read it? What is your favourite line? We are looking forward to celebrating this great novel and its author throughout 2016 - the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Bronte. facebook./Bronte-Parsonage-Museum-

gradesaver/jane-eyre
 

Mr. Nicholls in Banagher.

Mr. Nicholls in Banagher 1904

 

Isn't it wonderful that people can become friends through internet?

 

Some days ago Anne from  stayathomeartist wrote a post on my weblog

 about the visit to Banagher she and her husband made

brontesisters/a-visit-to-banagher.html

 

Today I read her story on her own weblog

stayathomeartist/banagher.html

 

I know Anne a good many years

 

When I started this weblog

I started in the first place for myself

I started in Dutch

I wanted to collect all kind of articles about the Brontes

 

 But during time I copied parts of articles

and I realised I find much more articles in English then in Dutch

And doing so I started to meet people

from all over the world

And I love it

 

Like Anne who is living in the States

I admire the knowledge she has about the Brontes!!!!

 

It gives me so much fun

to meet Bronte fans

In real life I don't know anyone who even reads a Bronte novel ;-)

 

Anne, I copied 2 photographes you have on your weblog

I never saw the picture of Mr. Nicholls in Banagher 1904 ( see above)

What a beautiful picture

 

And the photograph here under

The same spot in Banagher today

 

Read: stayathomeartist/banagher.html

 

 

 

On 8th October, the United Kingdom celebrates National Poetry Day.The beautifully mournful poetry of Anne Bronte.

 

 

When away from the influence of Emily, for example when at Roe Head school in Mirfield or as governess to the Ingham or Robinson families, Anne wrote poetry that was much more personal to her. Occasionally she wrote poetry that was ostensibly said by Gondal characters, but which really spoke of her own feelings, as in the beautiful yearning of ‘Home’:

 

“How brightly glistening in the sun
The woodland ivy plays!
While yonder beeches from their barks
Reflect his silver rays.
That sun surveys a lovely scene
From softly smiling skies;
And wildly through unnumbered trees
The wind of winter sighs:
Now loud, it thunders o’er my head,
And now in distance dies.
But give me back my barren hills
Where colder breezes rise;
Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield an answering swell,
But where a wilderness of heath
Returns the sound as well.
For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between;
Restore to me that little spot,
With grey walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.
Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,
And though its halls are fair within –
Oh, give me back my HOME!”

 

Nick Holland

On #NationalPoetryDay read my blog about the beautifully mournful poetry of Anne #Bronte http://wp.me/p6M2Lg-4j

Bracelet made of of the intertwined hair of Emily and Anne Brontë.

This bracelet is made of of the intertwined hair of Emily and Anne Brontë and was owned by their sister Charlotte.

The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects.
Here’s an excerpt, about the miniature books the Brontë children constructed.

Photo: deborahlutz: This bracelet is made of of the intertwined hair of Emily and Anne Brontë and was owned... http://tmblr.co/ZRm5Uj1vb0OY8