The Brontës

by Juliet Barker

The tragic story of the Bronte family is well known, replete with a half-mad father, a wastrel of a brother, and three uniquely gifted - and oppressed - sisters. But beyond these familiar details, the Brontes' story has remained largely obscure. This landmark book is the first definitive history of this fascinating family. Based on eleven years of research among newly discovered letters by every member of the family, original manuscripts, and the newspapers of that time, it gives a new and fuller picture of the Brontes' lives from beginning to end and, in the process, demolishes many myths. The father, Patrick, was not, as commonly believed, the cold patriarch of a family of victims. Charlotte, ruthlessly self-willed, ran roughshod over her sisters and went so far as to alter or destroy their manuscripts when she disapproved. Emily was so psychologically and physically dependent on her fantasy life that she could not survive in the outside world. Anne, widely regarded as the gentlest of the sisters, had a core of steel and was a more daring and revolutionary author than Charlotte. Branwell, the adored brother, was a talented poet who provided much of Charlotte's inspiration.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, 19th Century, Historical, Books About Books

1003 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Juliet R. V. Barker (born 1958) is a British historian, specialising in the Middle Ages and literary biography. She is the author of a number of well-regarded works on the Brontës, William Wordsworth, and medieval tournaments. From 1983 to 1989 she was the curator and librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Barker was educated at Bradford Girls' Grammar School and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she gained her doctorate in medieval history. In 1999 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Bradford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very, very long, but well worth the read as it delves deep into the whole family and how they influenced each other and dispels lots of myths that have somehow become ingrained about the Brontes.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juliet Barker's The Brontës, published in 1994, is a humungo 830 pages, followed by 170 pages of notes. It is frequently, so it seems, referred to as the "definitive" Brontë biography, which is why I asked my friend The Blond Knitter to buy it for me when I won her blog contest. (I like to think of the writers of definitive biographies crying "Follow that!" as they write the final line. I would.)

The Brontës totally lives up to its billing. Between the text and the notes (which I only dipped into), I really did feel that Barker had explored every possible source available to her. And yet not once, not once, I am not kidding you, was I bored. This could be due to my fascination with all things 19th-century-literature, but I think I'll put it down to good writing.

And I discovered so many interesting things, especially about Patrick Brontë, the father, and his most famous daughter, Charlotte. The book begins with the transformation of Paddy Branty, a poor but highly intelligent farmer's son, to the gentleman who outlived his wife and all six of his children; in some ways, he is the star of the narrative just by reason of his longevity.

Barker sets out to set the record straight about Patrick, who in Brontë legend is usually seen as mad and bad; in her book you get a portrait of a deeply devout clergyman (with a few foibles, such as a tendency to brag about himself and his children to the family he left behind in Ireland) who greatly loved his children, encouraged them to think and write, and was constantly worried about their ill health (which mostly seems to have been due to Haworth's generally unhealthy environment. The water supply was bad, and disease was rife in the village). Charlotte, on the other hand, comes across as less saintly than she usually does: she was rather on the bossy side, prone to outbursts and sulking, and decidedly manipulative.

Barker quotes extensively from the Brontës' letters and early poetry and prose, showing every alteration and insertion so that I got a real sense of their writing process. Fascinating. Her notes are detailed and written in just as lively a fashion as the text.

As the book advanced, it became increasingly hard to put down. A very nicely done treatment of a fascinating group of subjects. I'm actually racking my brains to think of a criticism, but the only one that comes to mind is that the collection of photos is a little idiosyncratic. But I've read enough about the issues surrounding the publication of photos in books to understand that this may have been a situation beyond the author's control.

I'm happy. Except that I have to inform you, dear reader, that this is a hard book to obtain. I was lucky and located a good copy at a reasonable price, but I see that on the day of writing we're talking about "collectible" (i.e. exorbitant) prices. I hope you have better luck.

Update 2021: it has been re-issued in print and as an ebook, and prices are now extremely reasonable. I used to insist on reading biography and history in print but my shelf space is now very limited as a result of downsizing and I find I’m quite happy with reading on an ereader.

[Belen (f.k.a. La Mala ✌) · Rating 5 out of 5]

La leyenda literaria de los Brontë empezó con un juego de chicos.
Así lo contaba Charlotte en 1829:

"The play of the Islanders was formed in December 1827 in the following maner. One night about the time when the cold sleet and <?> \dreary/ fogs of November are succeeded by the snow storms & high peircing nightwinds of confirmed <?> winter we where all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire having just concluded a quarel with Taby concerning the propriety \of/ lighting a candle from which she came of victorious no candles having been produced a long pause suceeded which was at last broken by B saying in a lazy maner I dont know what to do this was reechoed by E & A
T   wha ya may go t’bed
B   Id rather do anything [than] that
& C Your so glum tonight T supose we had each an Island.
B   if we had I would choose the Island of Man
C   & I would choose Isle of Wight
E   the Isle of Arran for me
A   & mine should be Guernsey
C   the D[uke] of Wellington should be my cheif man
B   Her[r]ies should be mine.
E   Walter \Scott/ should be mine
A   I should have Benti[n]ck
here our conversation was interupted by to us dismal sound of the clock striking 7 & we where sumoned of to bed. the next day we added several others to our list of names till we had got allmost all the cheif men in the Kingdom."

...para luego empezar a escribirse en libros diminutos improvisados con papel de diario:



Primero les tocó a Branwell y a Charlotte inventar el mundo de Angria, con héroes de guerra sacados de las noticias que leían en revistas, imitando el estilo pero ofreciendo el original toque de la imaginación de ambos:


(Fíjense el tamaño: 5cm)

Después le llegó el turno a las hermanas más chicas, Anne y Emily, quienes dieron origen al mundo de Gondal (la fuente de inspiración para el pre-Heathcliff y la pre-Catherine), influenciadas por las aventuras de los libros de Walter Scott y los amores controversiales de las poesía de Lord Byron (ambos ídolos máximos de los hermanos Brontë.)

Las historias evolucionaron hasta el punto en que la fantasía parecía, muchas veces, dominar la realidad. Para los Brontës Branwell, Charlotte, Emily y Anne, el mundo mágico, épico, de personajes heroicos y a veces brutales, era más apasionante que la vida misma, que la vida en aislamiento en el parsonage




....los chicos, introvertidos, inocentes y mimados por un padre viudo (la madre había muerto de cáncer poco después de nacida Anne) y una tía soltera (sin contar a los escasos empleados, que eran familia también), inventaban la vida y la aventura por escrito, prefiriendo siempre el mundo de la imaginación al de la vida común.

Pero los chicos crecen, y esos hermanos tan unidos en el mundo de la fantasía y la poesía, crecieron y en el camino, los años adolescentes, los efímeros años adultos, vinieron las obvias separaciones, peleas, y decepciones.



Y, sin embargo, nunca dejaron de ser esos chicos solitarios e introvertidos que encontraban más felicidad en la magia de la ficción que en la áspera verdad de la adultez.

-

Esta biografía es excepcional. Quienquiera que se le atreva a las 1000 y pico de páginas, va a conocer a fondo lo que fue la vida de esta familia. Olvídense de The life of Charlotte Brontë, la errada biografía que escribiera Elizabeth Gaskell- es esta biografía la indicada -absoluta- para aquellos que quieran conocer en detalle a los Brontë; ésta la que se ocupa en desmitificar por completo a los hermanos y al padre clérigo. Juliet Barker derriba hasta la última leyenda en pie con evidencias más que suficientes. Muestra a cada integrante de la familia como fue realmente. Humanos y nada más.

Desde Patrick Brontë abandonando su país natal, Irlanda, con terror a las revoluciones, buscando la vida pacífica en su religión; pasando por crisis económicas, guerras a lo lejos, matrimonios, muertes (porque hay demasiadas tragedias en la vida Brontë, demasiadas!) y cartas interminables desde Yorkshire hasta Nueva Zelanda. Cada palabra cuenta, cada violación a la intimidad que hiciera hace 150 años, Elizabeth Gaskell, con la ayuda de la "amiga" de Charlotte Ellen Nussey, cada traición es expuesta pero, a fin y al cabo, sirve para retratar quienes fueron estas personas. La traición que cometieran los mal llamados amigos de Charlotte son los que, el día de hoy, sirven para demostrar la humanidad de estos artistas.

Charlotte, la gran protagonista. La primera en tocar la fama con las manos.



Egoísta, intelectual, guardiana, (y a la vez lo contrario) de sus hermanas , enamorada no correspondida que transformaba sus pasiones en literatura; la mujer que buscaba el reconocimiento a costa de cualquiera, la que pusiera en boca de Jane Eyre el "yo quiero ser tu igual" pero que perseguía el amor para someterse a él y quien, en los últimos meses de su vida, encontrara la felicidad total en el matrimonio con un clérigo "aburrido" y no en las letras que tanto bien le habían hecho de niña.

Branwell, the promise betrayed,



el artista que nunca fue, autodestruyendose en alcohol y el opio; el gran orgullo de su padre y sus hermanas cuando era chico; quien, de grande nunca, por más esfuerzo que le puso (que está bien demostrado en este libro que el pobre adicto siempre luchó por no dejarse estar), no logró el éxito ni el amor que tanto deseaba, traicionado por una amante maldita (Mrs. Robinson, irónico el nombre para una mujer mayor y casada que no hizo más que aprovecharse de un joven prometedor para lueg contribuir a arruinar su vida, pagando sus adicciones) y por su propia imposibilidad para darse a conocer sin dejar su arrogancia de lado. Nunca malvado, siempre soberbio.


Emily, las más misteriosa de los cuatro. No porque guardara algún secreto, ni porque tuviese una doble vida; sino porque su vida era pura y exclusivamente su ficción: Gondal, el mundo de fantasía que creara con Anne. No se puede saber mucho sobre lo que sentía o pensaba, porque , efectivamente, Emily no
vivía ni pensaba más allá de Gondal. Sus historias (junto con sus perros) eran su gran alegría. Su Heathcliff y su Catherine, inspirados por su amor a las historias de Walter Scott y por las mismas historias de Branwell y Charlotte. (Sin la influencia de Branwell, quizá los libros jamás hubiesen existido), su amor por lo brutal que Charlotte tanto buscaba esconder del público (se da a entender que Emily había escrito una segundo novela pero Charlotte, para cuidar la reputación de su adorada hermana, tan devastada por la crítica por sus "personajes horrible", puede haber quemado el manuscrito antes de que otros pudiesen leerlo.

Y Anne, probablemente, la más sensata de todos. Cuando sus hermanos preferían ahogarse en la lástima por ellos mismos, era ella quien se levantaba y actuaba; la primera en buscarse trabajo y mantenerlo como se debe; la que escribía historias sin hacerle asco a las verdades. Hecha y derecha, menospreciada injustamente por Charlotte, negandose a dejarse manejar por ésta. Una genia menospreciada. La gran promesa que no tuvo tiempo de ser: injustamente olvidada, casi borrada (en parte por culpa de Charlotte, que se negaba a reconocer su talento, incluso después de su muerte). Juliet Barker demuestra a través de versos sin editar, la fuerza de voluntad y estilo propio que Anne tenía.



Leer esta biografía tan extensa, tiene a veces el efecto de hacerte sentir estar hablando directamente con sus protagonistas. Yo me sentí así, al menos. Barker no esconde nada, no embellece nada. Todo está expuesto con objetividad. Demuestra a la perfección las verdades que Gaskell (manipulada por la traidora "amiga" Ellen Nussey) prefierió esconder. Como ien dice en algún momento:

"Charlotte and her sisters thus became the dutiful, long-suffering daughters and Branwell the wastrel son of a harsh, unbending father. The portrayal of Charlotte as the martyred heroine of a tragic life, driven by duty and stoically enduring her fate, served its purpose at the time. Charlotte’s wicked sense of humour, her sarcasm, her childhood joie de vivre which enlivens the juvenilia, are completely ignored. So, too, are her prejudices, her unpleasant habit of always seeing the worst in people, her bossiness against which her sisters rebelled, her flirtations with William Weightman and George Smith and her traumatic love for Monsieur Heger. What remains may be a more perfect human being, but it was not Charlotte Brontë.
Mrs Gaskell’s Emily, too, reduced to a series of vignettes illustrating her unusual strength of character, betrays nothing of the obsession with Gondal which made her almost incapable of leading a life outside the sanctuary of her home but led her to the creation of the strange and wonderful world of Wuthering Heights. Anne is simply a cipher, the youngest child, whose boldness in defying convention by adopting a plain heroine in Agnes Grey and advocating startlingly unorthodox religious beliefs and women’s rights in The Tenant ofWildfell Hall finds no place in Mrs Gaskell’s portrait."

...y cómo tan injustamente optó por manchar a Bell Nicholls, el viudo de Charlotte y al mismísimo patriarca Brontë, Patrick, con mentiras y falsas evidencias (todas de las bocas de gente envidiosa o resentida por alguna razón u otra).

"Most of all, however, it was the men in Charlotte’s life who suffered at her biographer’s hands. The Patrick Brontë who took such tender care of his young children, campaigned incessantly on behalf of the poor of his parish and espoused unfashionable liberal causes is unrecognizable in her malicious caricature of a selfish and eccentric recluse. Similarly, the Branwell who was his family’s pride and joy, the leader and innovator, artist, poet, musician and writer, is barely touched upon, despite the fact that, without him, there would probably have been no Currer, Ellis or Acton Bell."

Es un librazo difícil de leer porque, lo repito, no deja nada de lado. Los detalles a veces pueden resultar pesados o abrumadores, pero, al final, valen la pena leerlos para tener un entendimiento a fondo de cómo vivieron, cómo se sintieron y tristemente murieron los legendarios Brontë.

"More than anything else (...) they had each other. As children they had needed no other companions and in the sometimes heated, often intense, but always affectionate rivalry between them, they had each found a place and a voice. Even as adults they tended to exclude others: though self-sufficient as a unit, they were dependent on each other for the mutual support and criticism which underpinned their lives and illumined their literary efforts."


Al final de todo, ya sin las escritoras prodigiosas ni la promesa fallida del hijo, solos Patrick y el yerno Arthur contra el mundo, injustamente criticados y señalados debido a la publicación del libro de Gaskell. Solos para pelear por la memoria de los fallecidos y el respeto a la privacidad de una familia por siempre destinada a la leyenda.

Juliet Barker les da la oportunidad de reinvindicarse...una chance tan merecida para ellos! Branwell, condenado a ser un artista misterioso olvidado en adicciones, es, con justicia, es bien representado como un pobre pibe con aspiraciones que nunca pudieron ser (tanto en el arte como en el amor.) Ni tan maldito ni tan santo, sólo humano. Charlotte, que antes fuera una santa aburrida y sola, es introducida como una mujer capaz, con muchos defectos y egoísmos propios de un temperamento tan genial como problemático. Emily, el mayor misterio, desmitificada, presentada como una chica simple que prefería los héroes brutales de su amado Walter Scott a la vida social del afuera. Anne, la olvidada, ahora revivida como una cristiana cuasi feminista, que en sus libros y poemas fue más bisagra que Charlotte, más valiente, más inteligente y práctica, sus corajes más osados, sus historias mucho más realistas y menos románticas, tanto en la vida como en la literatura. Y, finalmente, Patrick, pintado por Ellen Nussey (y en consecuencia, por Gaskell, quien, en las palabras de Patrick : " “Well, I think Mrs Gaskell tried to make us all appear as bad as she could”.) como un tirano sin sentimientos, tanta injusticia, en esta biografía es el padre solo, de una inteligencia admirable que supo criar hijos geniales, dándoles todo el amor; después de ellos, triste, solitario y final, acompañado por la inquerantable amistad de MR. Charlotte Brontë, es decir, el viudo Arhtur Bell Nicholls.

Los Brontë, personas de carne y hueso, a veces más llenos de fantasías y sueños que de realidad. Aislados pero juntos, al final, en el paisaje de cumbres borrascosas que envuelve a la magnífica casa BrontË, en Haworth.

Muchas lágrimas, y mucho amor para ellos, que por siempre van a ser inolvidables. Los amo hasta el fin. Y (aunque sé que Barker nunca va a leer esto) igual, gracias a vos, genia total, biógrafa soñada, por semejante libro. Las Brontë (al menos Charlotte, Patrick y Branwell) seguro te estarían muy agradecidas.

(Reseña con links de interés y fotos explicadas en La Loca de los Libros. o para más fotos/info/links, los invito a pasar por mi tablero dedicado a la familia Brontë-lo empecé hace poco pero pienso (tratar de) subir todas las últimas novedades que vaya pescando de acá y allá)

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barker’s penetrating, all-encompassing view of an age (albeit with one family as it’s single focal point) is the ultimate reference for Bronte aficionados.

Tireless in its research and painstaking detective work - at times didactic and brusque but never less than passionate - here is everything a reader would ever want or yearn to know. Yes, it’s exhaustingly long (and sometimes infuriating in its incessant labouring and bias), but never dull.

And in case you’re wondering about the veracity of the new and very enjoyable cinematic fantasy ‘Emily,’ Barker will quickly convince you that the film is just that.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an exceptional biography. The sheer volume of information, the minute details, the nuanced approach and the length of the biography makes for dizzying, palpable time-travel. Barker's prose is elegant and fluid, but what is most engaging and most admirable is the work and rigour and effort that are comprised here. Truly, truly amazing. Above all, there is a sense of investigative prowess and integrity: Barker sounds passionate about her subject, but never blind, and never complacent. She is shattering the myth because she is much more interested in the truth, its facets, its depths, and its grey areas. The book sheds light on processes, on relationships, on context, on dynamics and influences, and no stone feels unturned. It's not only fact-checking either. It does make you think and interpret for yourself. I'm gushing! But this really an exhilarating book. A great experience of reading, a study of humanity, creativity, collaboration, of family love that both highlights and goes beyond its subject. I just closed the book and I wish I could take it up again immediately.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read many books on the Brontes, but this weighty tome has sat on my shelf for years. Now is the time!

Great book, overall. This is definitely THE book for the diehard Bronte enthusiast. It is extremely detailed, and extensive. The author does a fantastic job of recreating the world of the Brontes. Unfortunately, we don't know many details about the Brontes' lives, but the world in which they lived can be revealed through newspaper accounts, diary and journal entries, letters, etc. This book goes a long way in bringing that world to life.

There is also extended discussion of the writing of all the Bronte authors: father Patrick, brother Branwell, and the famous three sisters. In this book there is a tremendous amount of insight gained into the juevenilia of the four siblings; long explorations into their imaginary world of Gondal. Much of this was brand new information to me.

For those who are fans of Emily or Anne Bronte, be prepared for mild disapppointment. We know much more about Charlotte Bronte than about any of her siblings, and this comes out in the book through much more space being devoted to Charlotte than the others. This is not a flaw, just an unavoidable necessity due to the nature of the surviving documentary evidence.

The first few chapters delve into the birth and life of Patrick Bronte, the father and patriarch of this famous family. I greatly enjoyed learning so much about him and the early years of the Brontes. Most of this information was new to me.

One of the best things about this books is the meticulous documentation. Everything is noted with an extensive list of end notes. For anyone seriously studying the Brontes, for those wanting to become experts on Bronteana, this is an indespesable resource. Basically the entire history of Bronte research is referenced in these pages.

Bottom line, this is a very long, indepth, detailed book, that can at times become tedious; however, as far as I know, there is no better book on the entire Bronte family. Highly recommended especially for the SERIOUS Bronte student or enthusiast.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a full two months to finish this book. After watching the recent biopic about the Bronte siblings, I was excited to read this biography which had been sitting very large and intimidating on my shelves for a few years. However, when I started reading I found out just how incredibly detailed the book is, about every possible aspect of the Brontes' lives, including their father's life, education, and career before the siblings were even born, every plot of their childhood writings, every social outing in their lives, etc. I skimmed through some of these parts, but once it got into their actual lives as adults and writers, it was much more fascinating and enthralling. Some parts were very fast reads, others started to drag on again. Eventually, I realized the author must have never intended to "tell a good story" and rather, meant to supply every fact and possible fact about their lives, without much thought to pacing & story arc. Thankfully, the lives of the Brontes are interesting enough to be a good story, once you get through it.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is my favorite book of all time, and in high school and college, I read many of the Bronte books, wrote many essays about them, and read a few biographies or articles about their lives. I still did not know most of the information from this book, so I in no way regret the time I spent reading this book. I had the dual experience of both not knowing "what happened next" and also feeling like I already knew the events of their lives. I hadn't realized how autobiographical Charlotte's novels were, and I loved seeing how Charlotte became who she was as a person and as an author. I wish I could know as much about Emily and even Anne, since unfortunately there is not much left from their writings or letters. I do have a definite sense of accomplishment for having finished this huge book, and I'm also left with a very deep desire to re-read all of their works, and finally read the ones that I haven't. And, of course, to someday make my own pilgrimage to Haworth & the moors.

[Tumblyhome (Caroline) · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant biography. I first read this book about 20 years ago but understand it has been revised and updated, so I wanted to reread it. I was a little daunted by the size, my edition has 979 pages plus extensive notes at the end taking it to 1158 pages in total. I should not have been intimidated by that, the book had me engrossed and living within its pages this past month or so. While Wuthering Heights is in my top three favourite books and I do sort of like Jane Eyre, I would not describe myself a die hard Bronte fan. So I don’t think this is a book that is only relevant to those ardent followers of all things Bronte.

Juliet Barker has written such a thorough, well researched book. As well as leaving no stone unturned and detailing so much information based on fact, not speculation, she has also succeeded in making this story readable and as enjoyable as a novel.

I enjoyed the social history aspect of the book, e.g. it told the story of life in the North of England, in small towns, not just the big cities and how someone from that background viewed London life during the Victorian era. It was a really interesting perspective. But mostly I loved reading about how the creative talent within the Bronte family developed. Their story is utterly remarkable, fascinating and unique.

Dare I say that I am not a Jane Austen fan at all ( updated in 2025…. I suddenly had an Austen epiphany and now very much like her), the manners, high society and neatness of those books just doesn’t (as if 2025.. ‘didn’t ) speak to me. It is an England I don’t recognise. The Brontes books are wilder, less civilised, with the wind from across the moors blowing out from the pages of their books. This biography is like that also, to read it is to know that the landscape of the Brontes home was woven into them and poured out of their pens in all it’s bleakness. In that respect I loved reading of Emily Brontes love of the moors and how that translated itself into Wuthering Heights.

If I had to be more balanced in this review I would say that I wasn’t so interested in the church politics Patrick Bronte had to deal with and felt the imaginary world building in the Brontes childhood and earlier writing was less enjoyable because it was described in much detail, but agree completely that it needed to be included.

All in all I am a bit sad I have finished the book...I loved it.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bored to senselessness, at times. Exhaustive, comprehensive -- yes. But Barker is not a writer, nor one who can spin an interesting tale out of dust. The writing reminds me of one of those endless droning tour guides who just won't shut up and let you enjoy magic: they insist on analyzing the larva incubating in the corner. The detail is wonderful -- and wondrous to those who love the Brontes, as I do -- but the message is carried by an-oh-so-average medium. Three stars is generous, only for the volume of facts herein presented. I had to skim some, or I'd be dead now, under its weight.

[Girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a fascinating book, definitely a must read for everyone interested in the Brontes more than just in passing. If the recently published The Bronte Family was just an overview of the Bronte history, Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors provides the necessary depth and a wealth of information regarding the five key Brontes - the father, Patrick, the three famous sisters, and the wayward son, Branwell.

In fact, at times the book focuses on Branwell with more sympathy than is afforded his sisters. One gets the sense that Barker wants to right the wrongs that other Bronte biographers did to Branwell, and goes a little overboard a few times. Branwell is depicted as essentially blameless in his downfall - he was seduced, enabled and led into the dark side, mostly by his lover, Mrs. Lydia Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, in turn, is portrayed as a straight up vamp, who first seduces poor (almost) innocent Branwell, then waits for her husband to croak, and then (o horror of horrors) marries a wealthy man instead of her penniless lover. And Branwell drinks himself to early grave. While this interpretation is possibly true, we don't really know enough about the situation to ascribe blame so unambiguously. And as a side note - any time Barker uses such adverbs as "undoubtedly" and "surely", not only referring to Branwell, I am inclined to question the following sentence. After all, even some of the recorded explanations for various actions are not true-- e.g., Charlotte often claimed the need to stay at home because she couldn't leave her father, while other evidence suggests that the reason behind her reluctance to travel was that she was deeply introverted, and not infrequently depressed.

Still, Barker unearths a true plethora of information about both Branwell and Patrick, including the political interests of both, and various literary pursuits of the latter. There is less to learn about the Bronte sisters, though, perhaps because their lives have been already explored and analysed as far as possible. Barker largely confirms the common portraits of the younger two as those of a young woman content to be a recluse and to write mostly for herself (Emily) and a pious, quiet baby of the family, nevertheless eager to leave her mark on the world (Anne). When it comes to Charlotte, it seems that Barker is at times exasperated with her subject. Charlotte can be illogical and inconsistent (cf. her approach to her later husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls), and it's sometimes difficult to explain away her shortcomings-- paradoxically, because there is so much material to work with.

All this in mind, I have to say it was a really great read. Much recommended for all Bronte fans out there.

[Mary Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

06/23 16 I'm going to be with this a long time; it's over 1100 pages and far from light reading! You must be seriously interested in the Brontes to take this up.

07/10/16 This is a wonderful example of superb scholarship: meticulous, difficult, and patient research of both known and previously unexamined primary sources. Forget everything you thought you knew about the Brontes, especially Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte (although I like Gaskell's Victorian novels). It's also very readable and beautifully annotated.

I don't know to whom I would recommend it. One should probably be a serious English major nerd, which I am. I loved it!

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Brontë devotees: I confess to skipping over most of Patrick's letters to local newspapers. Nonetheless, the account of Charlotte's lionization in the literary world following the success of Jane Eyre is fascinating. And Barker's stark descriptions of the deaths of Emily, Anne, and Charlotte are deeply moving.

[Girl with her Head in a Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/...

I have always felt rather guiltily that I would not count as a true Brontë fan until I had read this book.  I bought a copy of it for my mother for Christmas about eighteen years ago and read various chunks for a school project.  The odd thing is that when re-reading said project now, a Barker influence is quite noticeable, but yet I had never actually read the biography myself.  At one thousand and odd pages, heavily foot-noted, Juliet Barker's The Brontës is an off-putting read.  Even while planning my reading list for Brooding about the Brontës, I was not sure I could tackle this and read other books too.  Still, the siren call of the revised and updated edition proved too much and I got my Christmas book token out from its hiding place and decided to just go for it.  As it happens, this is one of those books that proves the point that not all long books are difficult to read.  It may be a thousand pages and I may have needed an extra bookmark to keep my place in the footnotes, but Barker is such a lucid and interesting writer that the pages fairly flew by.



John Sutherland in The Brontesaurus describes Juliet Barker as a 'level-headed' biographer and this is the over-arching impression across the book.  Barker methodically disproves so many of the widely accepted Brontë myths, from the incidents around Samuel Redhead's short-lived tenure as vicar at Haworth to Anne's supposed love for William Weightman to Patrick's supposed desire that Charlotte not marry.  Barker's impatience with Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë simmers beneath the surface of much of her biography; she points out that many of Mrs Gaskell's claims about Haworth were based on information that was a century old and that the wilder claims about the domestic set-up could be traced back to a dismissed nurse.  The Brontës is clearly intended to set the record straight, a broom to sweep away all that has gone before.

In fairness, Barker's approach does have a completely different feel to the other biographies that I have read.  For starters, as Barker points out, she is the first to bother looking in the contemporary newspaper accounts although these do provide a wealth of information about the world the Brontë family were living in.  This means that there is rather a lot about church politicking and the ups and downs of whether the rates were paid, but it grounds the Brontës far more and makes it clear that they were not existing in a bubble.

Also unlike most biographers, Barker starts not with the arrival of the wooden soldiers but some forty-odd years earlier with the birth of Patrick Brontë, father of the clan.  She tracks his meteoric rise from Irish farming stock to Cambridge and then into the church.  Patrick is so easily dismissed as the eccentric figure Mrs Gaskell reduced him to, so the incredible feat he achieved is too often forgotten.  Patrick transported himself into a different country, a different class, a different way of life.  Given the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the man had his quirks and it only seems sad that the majority of other biographers (cough Gaskell cough) have afforded him so little respect.

One of the notable features of Barker's interpretation of the family is the author's sympathy towards Patrick.  As well as laying clear Mr Brontë's early accomplishments,  Barker also tracks his tireless campaigning for the poor of his parish throughout The Brontës.  She steadfastly defends Patrick from almost all of the charges laid against him by Mrs Gaskell and is at pains to emphasise frequently that Patrick was a deeply caring father.  Barker also points out that much of his supposed intransigence came from Charlotte Brontë's own habit of using him as a convenient excuse to stay home and that Charlotte was quite happy to leave him when truly appealing invitations were on offer.

There are times when Barker's revisionist approach does challenge the reader's preconceptions.  Her suggestion that Cowan Bridge school might not have been as horrendous as heretofore believed can feel slightly blasphemous for those of us who read Jane Eyre.  Yet, as Barker points out, Charlotte Brontë herself said she would never have written it had she realised it would be recognised so easily.  Barker stipulates that there was a bad cook who was later dismissed but that otherwise, the death rate was not beyond the boundaries of what was normal.  With a grunt and a shrug, the reader is forced to accept this and move on.

Although there can be no doubt that she is a fan, one does feel that Barker is trying to dampen down the excitement caused by so many of the wilder ideas about the Brontë family.  She points out that it was a commonplace contemporary trend for bright children to makes maps of imaginary kingdoms and write stories so the Brontës were less unusual than people believed.  Reading this, I thought back to my own childhood which also featured a couple of map-making phases and a fair bit of writing stories.  She probably does have a point.

One of the main areas about which Barker seeks to redress the balance is Branwell.  While so many other biographers and fiction writers are so eager to paint him as the family failure from the first, Barker is more muted.  She establishes that the early episode of Branwell supposedly getting drunk and losing all his money in London is wholly fictional with Branwell never visiting the capital or trying to apply to the Royal Academy.  She suggests that Patrick was fooled by the inadequacies of Branwell's painting tutor into thinking his son was more talented than was the case.  Indeed, Barker judges Branwell's decision to paint himself out of the infamous Pillar Portrait to have been due to the grouping being overcrowded than any more emotional reason.  She points out that the pillar was painted with care and not in anger but that Branwell's inexpert use of the oils mean that the original image is slowly coming through.

The likelihood is that Branwell was not sacked for drunkenness at either his first tutor post or indeed while working at the railway.  In the first instance he seems to have fathered an illegitimate child with Barker tracing very carefully the identify of both mother and baby.  The railway position was more complex but seems to be around financial irregularity with Branwell negligent rather than personally guilty.  The Irish labourers who later biographers claimed to have led him astray never existed.  So until the Thorp Green posting, which Branwell lasted at for two years, maybe he was just an average young man trying to find his way in the world and occasionally stumbling.

There is almost pity in Barker's tone as she describes how impossible it was for a woman of such expensive tastes as Mrs Robinson to have ever seriously considered Branwell as a possible future husband.  Yet Branwell appeared to have sincerely believed in her affection for him.  His uncertain letters to John Brown about how to proceed in the affair again are hardly the mark of a practiced lothario. Later attempts to paint him as a disgrace from an early age show an attempt to read him backwards.  There was no Infernal World, there was just a naive young man from a sheltered background who never found his path.

Barker also rolls her eyes at the idea of Anne Brontë being in love with William Weightman, dismissing the theory as a 'castle in the air'.  She points out that nearly all that is known of Weightman comes via Charlotte who probably had a crush on him herself and whose feelings then turned to disdain when she realised that his friendliness marked no special interest.  William Weightman as seen in the Brontë mythology is a fictional creation with the snippets of other people's opinions failing to match up with the Gospel as decreed by Miss Charlotte Brontë - the real man may not have been a 'man-flirt' who was unsuited to the clerical life.  Certainly Patrick thought highly of the man and so did the people of the parish.  We only have Charlotte's word for the rest of it.

One of the things that Barker's biography is most known for is its supposed anti-Charlotte feeling.  Certainly, Barker's revisionist approach does counter the typical narrative of 'poor Charlotte' but I ultimately felt that the book was fairly even-handed in its evaluation of her.  Barker notes that Charlotte's 'recalcitrant' conduct as governess made her far from an ideal employee, but then defends her against Thackeray's comments since he tended to force her into situations which only immortalised Charlotte as anti-social.  Barker lays bare the fact that Charlotte was a depressive, that she was too intelligent to ever find contentment in a situation of servitude so governessing brought out the worst of her attributes.

Reading one of Charlotte's letters to Ellen Nussey when she snaps that she is always going to be a single woman, you realise again the impossible position of women in the nineteenth century.  Reviewers might snark that the Bell brothers seemed determined to focus upon the nastier side of life but Charlotte would not back down.  The passage in Shirley in which Mrs Pryor rails against the position of governesses was itself a direct response to a review that Charlotte found particularly unpalatable.  She wanted it to be clear that she was speaking the truth even if the world was not ready to believe it.  I did have to wonder what the Victorian reviewers would have made of misery memoirs if they thought Agnes Grey too barbaric.  Charlotte was not a saint, she was a human woman in a world with limited options for females and because of that, she often found life difficult.

Charlotte is always going to be the 'dominant' Brontë by virtue of the fact that more than nine hundred of her letters survived as opposed to about three of Emily's and five or so by Anne.  Added to that, Charlotte alone of her sisters actually courted a public profile.  It is unavoidable that her voice should be the loudest of the three.  But that does not mean that said voice should not be challenged.  Her patronising attitude towards Anne has done the youngest Brontë no favours in terms of legacy.  Charlotte's editing of Emily and Anne's poetry was baffling.  Emily and Anne refused to switch from their own crooked publisher to Charlotte's, despite it being clear that their sister was getting a much better deal, which illustrates their own desire to be independent from her.  It is then doubly regrettable that death left them unable to defend themselves from her encroachments.

Barker's determination to keep everyone's feet on the ground means that in way, the Brontës lose some of their 'magic'.  She theorises that Emily was not unable to cope away from the moors, but rather that time at school at Roe Head or working at Law Hill left her without the mental space for creative imagination.  Thus, Emily preferred being at home because she had the liberty of her own mind.  It's a less ethereal explanation but it made Emily less inexplicable to me; even in the modern era, functioning in the world of work can be tricky when you have a mind with thoughts that like to wander.

The Brontës shines a light on characters within the family story whose importance has been under acknowledged.  Arthur Bell Nicholls emerges as a far more warm-hearted figure than other biographers have tended to admit.  Barker looks beyond Ellen Nussey's jealousy to the man's external reputation and his obvious devotion to his wife.  For all that his marriage to Charlotte was short, the courtship was long and he had known her for years beforehand.  Mr Nicholls is far more than a footnote within Charlotte's story and I felt again the tragedy of his loss.  Barker describes how he remarried to a 'very understanding' cousin who arranged upon Arthur's death that his coffin should lie beneath Charlotte's portrait, the first wife never having been forgotten.

In attempting a group biography of all of the Brontës, Barker set herself a herculean task.  How best to fight through the waves of misconception and mythology?  At times, we sense Barker fighting through a thicket of distortion upon inaccuracy upon slander.  There was Ellen Nussey, always keen to plant herself front and centre of the action, particularly if it meant she got to discredit Charlotte's widower in the process.  There was Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth who never read Charlotte's books (he ran scared when she gave him a copy of Villette) but who was very keen to capitalise on her fame.  The creepy Brontë stationer John Greenwood who is even now seen as a reputable source by some biographers, eager to rise in society by posing as a family friend.  The sacked nurse turned up thirty-odd years later to blacken Patrick's name.  Mrs Gaskell had her own agenda too but faced with so many people who could not tell her the truth, it is perhaps little wonder that The Life of Charlotte Brontë veered so far from the facts.

The length of The Brontës makes it a daunting read but actually only until you start into it.  Barker is an engaging writer who expresses herself with feeling.  The chapters have real flow meaning that the biography is a real page-turner.  Reading the section about the death of Anne Brontë, I turned to my partner with tears in my eyes - he looked at me in astonishment, 'Surely you knew that was going to happen?'  Of course I did, but The Brontës made the pain of it all seem fresh once more.  Barker's command of her sources and depth of analysis put her book head and shoulders above the average Brontë biography.  In making the family seem human again rather than caricatures, she underlines the strength and genius which drew us to them in the first place.

[Beth Gea · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Charlotte's] careful choice of only seven poems, (...) was dictated partly by her own perception of Anne as Emily’s inferior.

Ugh, Charlotte.

Necesito empezar esta reseña diciendo que, a pesar de que sé que no quedan más que 4 cartas de Anne Brontë y que lo único que tenemos que habla por sí solo son sus libros, una parte de mí tenía la esperanza de encontrar más de Anne en las 1000 páginas de la biografía.


A pesar de que no ha sido el caso (me pregunto qué tipo de libros publicarán en 2020 con motivo del 200 aniversario del nacimiento de Anne), el libro me ha gustado tanto que me pasaba el día deseando tener 5 minutos para continuar leyendo.


Es cierto que si no te has leído todas las novelas de las hermanas y no tienes mucho interés por ellas a parte de “¡Oh, Heathcliff y Rochester son taaaaaan machos!” (cosa con la que, por cierto, estoy totalmente en contra, pero que ya sería otro tema), pues el libro se te va a hacer súper pesado.


Lo que más pesado se me ha hecho han sido las partes en las que la biógrafa se dedica a llenar páginas y más páginas con las riñas de la Iglesia y con nombres de Arzobispos, y curas y una serie de distinciones clericales que, a mi parecer, no eran necesarias. Pero entiendo que, en parte, ayudan a dibuja a un Patrick Brontë más fiel a lo que se supone que sería el original.


Porque, claro, por muchas cartas, por mucha investigación de archivos y de libros de visita, etc, etc, el libro está lleno de las interpretaciones, valoraciones y juicios de valor la autora. Y es que es difícil de adivinar lo que alguien puede sentir o pensar sólo por las cosas que ha dejado escritas, aunque sean cartas personales.


La biografía da mucho protagonismo al patriarca Patrick y a Charlotte, básicamente porque son los que más años vivieron en comparación con el resto de la familia y porque es de los que más cosas se conservan escritas (gracias a Charlotte, que quemó las cartas y la mayoría de los escritos de sus hermanas, alterando y censurando aquellos que decidió publicar).


Me gusta cómo se explica la figura de Branwell. Es una pena cómo termina, pero no es para nada un “fracasado” que no hizo nada: escribió mucho y sus poemas iban siendo publicados, aunque nunca fuese en forma de libro.


Sin embargo, por mucho (bueno, no voy a mentir, no mucho) que lo intente, Charlotte no me cae bien. Es ese tipo de chicas que nunca están contentas con nada, que nunca están impresionadas por nada y que siempre encuentran algo por lo que quejarse en todas las situaciones. Estoy segura de que no nos hubiéramos llevado bien. La única fase de su vida en la que empieza a caerme bien por el tono de sus cartas, es durante los meses de casada, que por desgracia fueron pocos debido a su muerte. Ahí me queda la duda: ¿tener compañía y alguien con quien compartir su día a día a un nivel íntimo habría disipado sus constantes estados depresivos? ¿O esa felicidad sólo habría durado durante el periodo de “luna de miel” y después hubiera supuesto otra carga para ella, como todo parecía ser por sus cartas?

______________________________
Primeras impresiones 14/11/19

Necesito algo de tiempo para procesar lo que he leído y poder hacer una reseña más o menos organizada. A modo de resumen, el libro me ha gustado mucho, aunque hay partes, sobretodo cuando la autora habla de entresijos de la iglesia y cuando aparecen poemas, que se me han hecho algo pesadas.

[Delphine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terminated in the final hours of 2021, Barker's biography of the Brontë family turns out to be one of the best reads of this year.

Barker clearly sets out her intentions in her revised representation of the life of Patrick Brontë and his children: she wants to correct the contemporary but flawed biography of Elizabeth Gaskell (Life of Charlotte Brontë). Patrick Brontë was not the cold, domestic tyrant nor was Branwell (his only son) merely a debauched drunkard. Charlotte wasn't the dutiful daughter, thwarted to life in isolated Haworth: she had a wicked sense of humour, a childhood joie de vivre, and received no less than four marriage proposals.

Barker's portrait of the Brontës is nuanced, containing many moving anecdotes about their careful father. Some less interesting episodes are worked out in great detail: Patrick's appointments as a clergyman before his arrival in Haworth and his subsequent battles there, or the elaborate description of the complicated fictional universes of the Brontë children (Gondal, Angria). However, this doesn't deter further reading nor mars my final appreciation for this biography.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read one book by each of three sisters (Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", Emily's "Wuthering Heights", and Charlotte's "Jane Eyre") I wanted to know how it's possible that after 150+ years, we are still reading books by all three of these sisters. (Has this ever happened in the world of literature? The odds against this happening must be stupendous!)
But the answer comes early in the book: Anne, Emily, Charlotte, and their brother Branwell began writing fiction and poetry very early in life. The four of them would sometimes continue another sibling's story, perhaps changing the direction, getting rid of a character, challenging the original author to explain how changes came about. That's the key I think: they challenged each other, all the while improving their own writing skills until they went their separate ways.
Branwell's life story was completely new to me, and was perhaps the saddest story within the family: he was accused of forging checks, of having an affair with a married lady (named Mrs. Robinson, no less) and of perhaps even seducing the son of Mrs. Robinson. A small portion of his early poetry was published, he started a novel but didn't complete it, he composed and played the piano and organ, and even turned to portrait painting. The picture on the front of this book was painted by Branwell, and you can see that one person was painted out: Branwell, his ghost slightly visible. Perhaps that's a prediction of his early demise as he descended into alcohol and perhaps opium addiction 'to find relief in oblivion'. (The author notes that this portrait now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London and may be the most viewed portrait in the entire gallery.) Also, I didn't know that the father, Patrick, survived all his children and passed at age 78.
Real life events influenced the writing of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte. For example, at one point Patrick is losing his vision, and Charlotte created a blinded Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre": naturally Jane would choose to aid Rochester in his blindness. Anne based "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" on a true event. And a reviewer intriguingly promises readers of Emily's "Wuthering Heights" that 'they have never read anything like it before.' I think Emily created the strongest and most influential character in all of their works: the haunted moors surrounding the family all their lives. This is a good read, but is plagued by a singular issue: density of information. It seems Barker has left nothing out and this reminds me of David Starkey's "Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII": both books are so dense the reader has to work to understand the overall point of numerous chapters. Where was the editor? Still, I found the answers I, personally was looking for within this book. And Barker ends her work perfectly: "Without this intense family relationship, some of the greatest novels in the English language would never have been written." Barker's work seems more passionate, more alive with new information, than Starkey's "Six Wives" (which I rated three stars) so I'm rating this book 4 stars.

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very long and detailed biography not only of the Bronte sisters but also of the whole family. The author begins with the humble beginnings of their father in Ireland to reach the era of the writing of their great masterpieces and their premature ending, describing in detail all this way, giving us a picture of their personalities, demolishing many of the myths around this extraordinary family. A book ideal for those who want to learn more about the personalities behind some of the best-known books of world literature.

Μία ιδιαίτερα μακροσκελής και λεπτομερής βιογραφία όχι μόνο των αδερφών Bronte αλλά και ολόκληρης της οικογένειας. Η συγγραφέας ξεκινάει από το ταπεινό ξεκίνημα του πατέρα τους στην Ιρλανδία για να φτάσει στην εποχή της συγγραφής των μεγάλων αριστουργημάτων τους και στο πρόωρο τέλος τους, περιγράφοντας με λεπτομέρειες όλη αυτή την πορεία, δίνοντας μας μία εικόνα για τις προσωπικότητές τους, καταρρίπτοντας πολλούς από τους μύθους που υπάρχουν γύρω από αυτή την ξεχωριστή οικογένεια. Ένα βιβλίο ιδανικό για αυτούς που θέλουν να μάθουν περισσότερα πράγματα για τα πρόσωπα πίσω από μερικά από τα πιο γνωστά βιβλία της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας.

[Moira]

AHAHAHA

OH MY GOD

IT'S FINALLY FUCKING AVAILABLE ON THE KINDLE

I WILL BE ABLE TO SEARCH IT ELECTRONICALLY

//buys immediately


....ahem. What?

[Fanny ♡ (fanny_priceyre) · Rating 5 out of 5]

𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓼: 𝓦𝓲𝓵𝓭 𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓲𝓾𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓜𝓸𝓸𝓻𝓼: 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓢𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓸𝓯 𝓪 𝓛𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓻𝔂 𝓕𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓵𝔂
𝓐𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓪: 𝓙𝓾𝓵𝓲𝓮𝓽 𝓑𝓪𝓻𝓴𝓮𝓻

Me complace informarles que este libro era mi reto del año y lo terminé en 7 meses. 🎉 Hice una lectura conjunta incluso 🤭 con una reunión mensual de @hermanasbronte_mexico.

Todo fan de las hermanas Brontë sé sabe su mítica historia. Este libro literalmente es una biblia, tiene más de mil páginas con muchas fuentes y notas. Juliet Barker al ser historiadora no sé podía esperar menos. Este es una trabajo minucioso y actualizado.

El estilo de la autora es muy del estilo de un historiador, no considero que sé destaque por su pluma, puede incluso ser confusa su escritura sí no estas acostumbrado a leer historiadores. Ya que salta de un personaje a otro, más el contexto. Así que en cuestión de información está muy bien.

Definitivamente no me esperaba encontrar tantos datos desmentidos. 😬 Sabía que la biografía de Charlotte Brontë escrita por Elizabeth Gaskell había dado mucho paso a los mitos y confusiones. Lo sorprendente es como prevalecen.

Aquí tenemos la reivindicación qué los personajes afectados por Gaskell como Patrick, Branwell Brontë y Arthur Bell Nicholls. La autora sé esfuerza por ser neutral y baja del pedestal a más de un personaje para que lo veamos de la manera más humana posible. Así que muchos mitos de las Brontë sé tambalean fácilmente.

Charlotte Brontë es un personaje controversial amada y venerada por los mitos que sé contaron de ella en vida. Y a la vez odiada por la crítica y más adelante con mitos ridículos como que mato a sus hermanos o que odiaba a su hermana Anne. 🙄 Juliet Barker nos muestra a Charlotte en todos sus aspectos y más de un mito es desmentido. (Personalmente ya nada me sorprende en el caso de este personaje.) De Emily y Anne no hay gran diferencia en la información que conocemos ya que la autora aclara que es poca la información que hay de ellas.

Cómo siempre hay cosas que no puedo estar 100% de acuerdo y otras que me resultaron sorprendentes. La reivindicación de la figura de Patrick Brontë es una de las más destacadas. Pero sin lugar a dudas el personaje que perdió todo mi respeto fue Elizabeth Gaskell. 🙈 Sabía que había hecho desastre y medio con la biografía de Charlotte pero no a que punto.

Recomiendo mucho esta biografía, pero sé debe leer con paciencia y sí eres fan de hueso colorado necesitas leerla. Lamentablemente sólo está en inglés 😪 y no sé destaca por ser sólo para entretenimiento sino de análisis.

Esta es LA BIOGRAFÍA mejor hecha de las hermanas Brontë que he leído hasta ahora. Vale mucho la pena.

[Savannah Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t believe I finally finished this LOLOL I am a changed woman. I’ve never cried so much about a family from the 1800s that I bear literally 0 relation to.

This was a brutally long read (with the density of a textbook) but well-worth the time of any Brontë superfan. Ask me any question about the Brontës and there’s a 99.9% chance I’ll be able to answer it now!

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very comprehensive biography of the Bronte family is a very hefty tome and in small print, with many chapter notes at the back, but was well worth the effort of reading. I found it very informative, and it was also a useful corrective of Daphne Du Maurier's short biography of Branwell Bronte, tackled at the same time - plus it will be again when I get round to reading Mrs Gaskell's famous biography of Charlotte.

The book starts with Patrick Bronte, father of the family, as a young man going to one of the colleges in Cambridge. As an Irishman, and from a not-wealthy background, he had done well to obtain an education in Latin and Greek - which anyone going to such a university had to have in those days - and to win a scholarship. With his hard efforts, he won prizes every year to supplement his grant, but still had to survive on a shoestring. Eventually he graduated and was able to apply to be a clergyman in the established church (Church of England). He then started on a series of jobs as a curate and worked his way up to being the vicar of Haworth, the town made famous by its Bronte association, where he served for many years.

Patrick has apparently been much maligned because of unsubstantiated stories about him in Mrs Gaskell's biography, which relied on malicious gossip from those with various axes to grind, including a servant sacked for unsatisfactory service and Charlotte's friend Ellen Nussey who wanted to monopolise Charlotte and was extremely jealous of her eventual husband. With the documented sources used in this biography, which includes local newspaper reports and the letters Patrick wrote urging reform of various social ills of the day, he comes across as a very tolerant clergyman who had a great deal of sympathy for the poor of his parish and for the Dissenting movements (non Church of England), and who held much more conciliatory views than most of his contemporaries. He campaigned for education of the local people and for improved sanitation - in a deplorable state in the town and causing a lot of premature death - and worked very hard for a comparatively low salary into old age, when he was forced by frailness and failing sight to hand over to the curate who eventually became Charlotte's husband. His only real faults are that as a younger man he had had rather unrealistic ideas about his eligibility as a marriage partner.

His children are each delineated although, as the author says, there is a paucity of material on Emily and Anne, resulting in previous biographers taking at face value Charlotte's published statements about them - which portray Emily as a wild, free spirit and Anne as a patiently enduring, rather depressive woman with strong Christian views whose talent wasn't a patch on Emily's. However, Barker is able to show that a lot of this over praises Emily, who had a selfish side and was content to live at home and keep house while her siblings had to work away on jobs they hated, and does injustice to Anne who had a tough, practical streak and was (certainly from what I am seeing now, being in the process of reading 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall') a much more talented writer than Charlotte was prepared to admit. Their early deaths, together with the ruin of their sole brother, Branwell, are a tragedy, but Barker also shows that Branwell lacked the industry and perseverence of his sisters and had an arrogant sense of entitlement which alienated the publishers of Blackwell's Magazine and others to whom his early attempts at being published were directed.

Barker destroys a few myths created in biographies such as du Maurier's, and establishes that Mrs Robinson, wife of Branwell's last employer, was culpable in the love affair which he blamed for his sacking. It was this and the dashing of his pie-in-the-sky hopes that Mrs R, widowed shortly after, would ever consider marriage with him rather than the lord to whom she promptly attached herself, that drove him into the bottle and the laudanum phial. Branwell was the first of the siblings to die, followed shortly afterwards by Emily and Anne, a sad sequence to read.

An interesting aspect is the depiction of Charlotte's stubbornness and almost bullying tactics in forcing her sisters to publish their poetry, then novels. She went so far, after their deaths, as to rewrite parts of their work, especially Anne's poems, and deplored her two sisters' choice of subject matter for their novels, which had been considered scandalous by many critics. She produced very odd defences of this, portraying them both almost as unlettered simpletons, cut off from any society - Barker shows that the area, although deprived, had a thriving cultural climate including libraries, lecture rooms and concerts - and despite the fact that both had received an education as good as Charlotte's own: Emily alongside Charlotte in Brussels, and Anne at school with Charlotte. In Anne's case she was even able to teach basic Latin to her pupils when a governess, which was unusual as this was usually taught by male tutors. In fact, it seems that Emily had at least commenced on a second novel and it is likely that Charlotte destroyed it, as it would have contributed further to her sister's bad reputation from the then-shocking "Wuthering Heights".

Charlotte also suffered from depression and hypercondria. I did wonder whether Branwell's swings from high spirits to depression might have been due to bipolar disorder (or as it would have been termed at the time this biography was published in the 1990s, manic depression) and also whether Charlotte had a touch of this too though not to the same degree as she was able to pull herself out of her lows by hard work. Both siblings did form unsuitable attachments and were desperately unhappy as a result, although Charlotte did manage to control her feelings more than Branwell despite sending lovelorn letters to her ex-Professor in Brussels and becoming rather too close to her sympathetic publisher. This tendency did, however, impact her ability to write anything, especially after the loss of her sisters, which threw her into a deep depression, especially when the anniversary of their deaths arrived. It was heartening to see that her all-too-short marriage to Arthur, the curate, was happy despite her initial doubts about accepting his proposal, but it was cut short by her wasting away from pregnancy-related uncontrollable vomiting, something the biographer speculates could have been triggered by an infection which in modern times would have been curable.

The book finally winds up with the fates of the two men in the parsonage - Patrick and his son-in-law Arthur who took care of him, carried out all his duties, and was treated disgracefully when Patrick died. It also describes the start of the Bronte cult with all the attendant myths, mostly derived from Mrs Gaskell's biography.

On balance I have rated this at 4 stars as I did find the lack of any suggestion of bipolar disorder affecting the two best-documented Bronte siblings rather an omission. There were also so many people to keep track of, especially clergyman colleagues of Patrick's, that it wasn't always possible to remember who someone was when reintroduced later. But other than that, it was a very satisfying read.

[David Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I tried to read it slowly, just 30 pages or so a day since I was given it for my birthday some six weeks ago, but the joy had to end at some point, and that point was this evening. As a gift, it was a revelation and a eureka moment, as I have never been a Bronte fan, and -I think- only ever read Emily's "Wuthering Heights" (at uni). And yet I was pulled in and removed to the 1800s, to Yorkshire, through the intricate, detailed and interesting retelling of the Family Bronte, from father Patrick's journey to England from Ireland at the turn of the century, through his work, his middle-aged marriage and six children, and then through their wonderful imaginations and untimely deaths, their lonlieness and loves, their strength of family and sense of disconnectedness from the rest of the world. I could identify with much here, but was pulled in by the depth and thought behind all the fine detail. If you have any interest in the Brontes... or even if you had next to none, kind of like me, I would heartily recommend this somewhat large (almost 1000 pages) biography. It will fly by your fingers. Oh yes, I have also recently bought cheap n cheerful second hand copies of all seven Bronte novels, and will now relish every last one of them.

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 830 pages (plus notes,) Juliet Barker's biography "The Brontes" is incredibly comprehensive -- perhaps a little too dense for a more casual reader interested in learning about the life of authors Charlotte, Anne and Emily Bronte.

The book mostly focuses on Charlotte and her father Patrick, as Anne and Emily died young and had no friends to correspond with, so letters detailing their lives are pretty much non-existent. Charlotte's letters to her friend Ellen chronicled much of her life and Ellen turned those letters over to Charlotte's first biographer, Mrs. Gaskell, so there is a lot more source material there. It also contains a good deal of information about their brother Branwell, and his descent into alcoholism and depression, which eventually killed him.

I thought the book bogged down a bit (considering Charlotte, who lived the longest of the sisters died at age 38... short lives all...) the quoting of the sister's childhood writing grew a bit tiresome for me. At the same time, Barker's book provides a great amount of insight into the sisters and what inspired them to write. The book also works hard to debunk some of the myths surrounding the sisters as well. Overall, an interesting and generally entertaining read.

[Liz Haigney Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched but also immensely readable. A strongly argued and compassionate corrective to the traditional view of Charlotte and her sisters as lonely eccentrics on the moors. Instead, Barker presents an absorbing portrait of a close-knit, creative family in a busy provincial town, and in particular does much to rescue the sisters' father, Patrick, and brother, Bramwell, from the stereotypical views of them in the Bronte legend. Extremely worth reading for anyone with an interest in the sisters and their real-life world, as well as the landscapes of their imagination.

[Big Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meticulously detailed and well-researched biography that attempts to provide more insight into the lives of multiple members of the Brontë family while also clearing up some of the pervasively false myths. Barker still spills some piping hot tea, but is upfront and honest about whether the material in question is speculation or fact (for example, technically I can’t hate Charlotte forever for burning Emily’s post Wuthering Heights manuscripts because “we can’t say for sure”... BUT WHAT IF SHE DID?!?). As this is a rather dense and time-consuming read it is probably best suited to Brontë enthusiasts as opposed to novices; however, I think the dramatic description of the bog-burst is something we can all enjoy and cherish :)

[Courtney Doss · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is the work of a biographer to present the details of one's life in a way that encompasses the complexity of personhood. To provide an accurate picture a person has to throw away biases and wishful thinking to see a person as they really were, and then use whatever faculties they have at their disposal to display that person in as clear and accurate a light as possible. Juliet Barker, with a painstakingly sourced book on the Brontes, comes as close as possible to providing a clear cut and comprehensive picture of the Brontes - at least as comprehensive as possible given their relatively private tendencies.

I have read four biographies on the Brontes this month, though none of them compared at all in length to this one, and Juliet Barker seems to have her finger on the pulse of who the Brontes were as people a bit more steadily than the other authors I have read from. I learned so much from this book that I hadn't known, not just about the sisters themselves, but also about their extended family and the community at large. When this book says that it is about the Brontes, it is about all of them including Patrick Bronte who died several years after his children. Unlike other biographies, this one doesn't leave off after Charlotte dies. It follows her father through his remaining years, and while I must confess that it didn't interest me as much as it might have if I hadn't just finished reading three other biographies in the same month, there is something to be said about that level of thoroughness.

Something interesting to note is the way Lucasta Miller's The Bronte Myth, another five star biography that I read earlier this month, is in many ways a direct answer to Juliet Barker's chunky work. I read The Bronte Myth first, so I was given a steady dose of Charlotte love right from the jump. Lucasta Miller has great affection for Charlotte Bronte; it is clear in her writing and therefore her biography of the sisters reads as a defense of Charlotte. Juliet Barker's portrayal of the sisters tries to be fair and impartial, but it is incredibly obvious in her writing that Barker views Charlotte's behavior and personality to be the least of the bunch. Having read both versions of the same stories, having seen the perspectives of both authors and the evidence both have used to support their own claims for the reality of Charlotte's character, I feel like I have a solid understanding of who she was.

I was surprised by my affection for Charlotte after reading The Bronte Myth, because I went into it expecting to hate her. I held a grudge against her for her treatment of the best Bronte, Anne, and her public criticism of Anne's work. The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors reignited some of those old irritations with Charlotte, but I think that Juliet Barker does an excellent job of trying to steer the reader toward a place of understanding. While Lucasta Miller goes all out with her bias for Charlotte, presenting her as a heroic defender of her sisters' memory and a stifled genius, Juliet Barker tries to rein in her own feelings about Charlotte. In passages where she does let her own opinions slip, she is quick to backtrack to a place of neutrality. For that reason, as well as the abundance of sources and footnotes, this is the superior biography.

Over the past month, reading all of the Brontes work in the context of their real lives, I have developed such a profound affection for the sisters, and The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors did nothing but add to that affection. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Juliet Barker's treatment of the deaths of the siblings brought tears to my eyes. Her inclusion of letters, poems, quotes, and anecdotes throughout the entirety of her factual story telling makes the book so personal. To read Anne's poetry, written immediately before her death, and see the fears that she hid from her sister; to hear of Emily's stern lack of empathy for her own condition and Branwell's descent into what was undoubtedly psychosis, or very near it, made everything that much more emotional. Reading Charlotte's lonely, mournful letters describing her own feelings after the death of her siblings was just the icing on the cake. To see the complicated relationships between siblings given such a delicate treatment was amazing.

I highly recommend this book to anybody that wants a comprehensive deep dive into the Brontes. By no means the only way to learn about them, this is by far the most comprehensive text that I've ever found. Wonderfully done.

[Steph Wylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Warning: If you aren't already somewhat familiar with the life stories of the Brontes, this review contains spoilers.**

02/22/2024
Don't read this book unless you want to have your heart broken. That is my strange way of recommending this book. I'm currently on page 682 and am typing this with tears drying on my face.

Last night I stayed up way too late reading about the final days and death of Branwell. Yes, he was a deeply flawed human being, but how he is often depicted in other sources/books as a total waste of flesh, villainous and with no redeeming qualities or humanity, both baffles and angers me. How do people so easily look upon the pain, suffering, loneliness, shame, and misery of a person, and then speak with regards to that person with such cold, unpitying, dismissive, judgement? I love that this book, while in no way concealing his foolish missteps, and the inevitable painful results of those choices to both himself and his family, doesn't attempt to degrade Branwell further by painting him as a two-dimensional character utterly lacking in any share of innate humanity. He was human; at times charmingly and endearingly so, even as he was also rawly and painfully so. Related to this, some months back I watched "To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters" (available on Amazon Prime video), and the scenes where Branwell was being mentally, emotionally, and physically ravaged by the effects of addiction and tuberculosis simultaneously, are so sad to witness.

Today, I picked the book back up and continued reading. The aching account of Emily's final days and death followed. And knowing enough about the Brontes to know that a similar account of Anne, and eventually even the narrator of much of these events, through her letters and writings quoted in this book, Charlotte, will come to an abrupt and young end as well. That brought me to where I am at this moment. Feeling a need to stop reading; to pause for some moments to process the large sadness in me, in part by writing this review.

I have a fascination with the Brontes, their lives and literature, in their own right. But I confess that reading about the sibling relationships, and Emily's death at this point resonates with me in another aspect. I grew up in a family of six children, and so feel some nostalgic joy, familiarity, and recognition in reading about the closeness, play, creativity, and sibling dynamics between the Brontes. Further, my older sister, Christi, who I admired, adored, and shared a close bond with, passed away unexpectedly on the last day of December 2015, at the age of 40. Shortly before, I had gone to visit her on the other side of the U.S., unaware at the time that the last two weeks I spent with her, were to be most of her last. Days after I returned home, she died. She too was brilliant in her own right, in both mind and heart. To lose a sibling that you have a deep irreplaceable bond with, and at an age where you feel suddenly blindsided by your own unconscious naivete at taking for granted that you would have many more years together - years to love each other, be each other's support through life's ups and downs, and grow old together........such an experience is hard to put into words. Reading this, I'm acutely aware that the Bronte sisters understood what that sibling love and loss was like. And there's a comfort in encountering people who understand something that affected you so profoundly, yet is so difficult, if not impossible, to truly convey to others if they have not lived it.

I am going to miss this book when I reach its end. At over a thousand pages, it will have been my near daily reading companion for some time.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker was, in my opinion, a masterful accomplishment and a moving study of, not only, the three Bronte sisters, but the Bronte and Branwell families as a whole and their friends and acquaintances. Regardless of contrary opinions, I believe most people can agree that Ms. Barker is unquestionably one, if not the most, accomplished expert on the Bronte family at the present time. Through her meticulous research and well documented conclusions, Ms. Barker provides aspects of the Bronte family that will help the reader understand them better than anything previously written, including the highly respected biography of Charlotte by Elizabeth Gaskell. In addition, the book is a joy to read, due to its organization and flow. Consequently, in many cases, it reads like a novel, keeping the reader's interest piqued throughout almost every aspect and season of the lives of this very interesting family. After reading this very detailed and prodigious volume I may not be an expert on the Brontes, but I feel that I know them better and can hold a much more cultivated discussion regarding them than previously. For anyone who has the curiosity regarding the Bronte family, the desire to know an alternate view of family members than has been previously understood, and the fortitude to read this daunting volume, I highly recommend this book. You will not be sorry.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, comprehensive biography. For the most part, this included precisely the kinds of information I wanted. I was especially interested in Barker's speculations about Anne and Charlotte's simultaneous, but secret spiritual struggles. And I thought Barker did well at separating known facts from speculation and being transparent about when she was sharing her opinions. (I say that as someone with what is probably only slightly more than a passing knowledge of the Brontes' lives.) Readable throughout, with a pleasing level of detail. The descriptions of Branwell and Charlotte's Angria juvenalia were the only things that I found tedious. I understand that she was trying to show their development as storytellers and how they influenced each other, but I couldn't hold all the Angrian characters in my head, nor did I particularly want to.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I visited Brontë Parsonage in September 2018. The woman at the ticket counter asked if it was my first visit. I said "yes" and promptly teared up, thereby endearing myself to the staff: The ticket counter lady ran over to the main house and told the staff there to take good care of me. Inside the house, one of the staff showed me some pictures from this book and told me it was their preferred biography of the family. Now I know why. I will come back to this book just as I come back to the Brontës' novels. What a lovely read.