D.M. Denton's Blog, page 15
January 17, 2018
If she were more perfect, she would be less interesting
the bicentennial
of her birth on January 17, 1820,
today is the 198th birthday
of the youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
She is subject of my new novel
Anne Brontë comes through as a leading character in her own right, not as an understudy. Diane has written an exceptional history of a hidden jewel in the family Brontë and imbued her with a strength, a tenderness, and a will to animate and to shine.
Literary fiction has another distinctive voice in Diane Denton.
~ Martin Shone, author of three beautiful poetry collections: Being Human, Silence Happens, and After the Rain.
[image error]
STC98097 Portrait of Anne Bronte (1820-49) from a drawing in the possession of the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, engraved by Walker and Boutall (engraving) by Bronte, Charlotte (1816-55) (after)
engraving
Private Collection
The Stapleton Collection
English, out of copyright
To mark Anne’s birth day, I am sharing an excerpt from Chapter Nine of Without the Veil Between, that includes an Emily initiated celebration.
It was years since Anne was home on her birthday. Emily baked an oatmeal and treacle cake a couple of days ahead of the teatime designated for its consumption to soften it in a tin.
“I’ll allow no one to refuse a piece of Annie’s parkin.” Emily, unusually, looked very pleased with herself. “I mean to give my bet’r sen some happy thoughts.” She even sang some lines from an old ballad supposedly from the time of Robin Hood. “‘Now the guests well satisfied, the fragments were laid on one side when Arthur, to make hearts merry, brought ales and parkins and perry.’”
“‘When Timothy Twig stept in, with his pipe and a pipkin of gin,’” Branwell followed on singing.
“Always the spoiler.” Emily didn’t look at him.
“Well, part of a song doesn’t tell the whole story.”
Anne briefly escaped their argument to take a piece of cake out to Tabby in the back kitchen. Easily wearied and hard-of-hearing, the old servant was trying to nap in a straight-backed chair positioned in the draft from the back door.
“Where’s your shawl?” Almost as soon as she wondered, Anne found it draped over the handle of a broom leaning against a wall.
“Eh? What yer fuss?”
Anne gently laid the loosely-knit shawl around Tabby’s shoulders and gave her the plate of cake.
“Dear angel-lass.”
Later, as the sisters spent a final parlor-cozy evening before Anne returned to Thorpe Green, Branwell off to take advantage of his last chance for a while to “stept in” at the Black Bull, even Charlotte admitted the liability he presented to their progress.
“The way it’s going with him, it’s better our school scheme comes to nothing. No doubt he’ll soon be home again, unemployable, even less able to provide decent company. Certainly not an example of manhood young girls should witness.”
Anne never told Charlotte as much as she did Emily, but there was no way to prevent the disturbance of her and Branwell returning home for the holidays together but estranged. As soon as they arrived, Anne fled the hours of traveling with him as though nothing ever disgusted her more. Over the weeks Branwell tried to converse with her beyond yes and no and maybe. Normally, her forbearing nature wouldn’t allow her to slight anyone, but with agitated busyness she dismissed him—to comb Flossy or clean Dick’s cage or help in the kitchen, which she rarely did, or beg Charlotte to let her read to their father who didn’t know of his son’s latest sin but might notice his guilt, so Branwell kept out of his way.
For a while Anne was as cowardly avoiding her brother, even if it meant staying in her room when he was in the house.
She wasn’t proud of her behavior. Gradually she felt more ashamed of her own choices and failings than Branwell’s, blaming her intransigence and righteousness for her failure to persuade him to stand stronger against temptation. Love was what she was made for, understanding, forgiveness and faith at the heart of her, good memories soothing the bad. Flashes of the gentle brother with his little sister on his knee, proving his talent for telling stories too entertaining to question and drawing pretty pictures he inscribed for Anne, tempted her to once more hope he might yet chose rationale and, especially, what was right, over ruin.
“Let’s expect he’ll be better and do better.” It was as if Emily had read Anne’s thoughts. “Speak no more of it tonight. Are you still working on the same poem, Annie?”
“Still wrangling with it. You know how it is, thinking it might be better with a different word or different order of words, more metaphors or less. That it might benefit from leaving some sentiments out altogether.”
“I hope it isn’t gloomy.” Charlotte was sitting across the parlor table from Anne, the paper she was fingering easily in view as the beginnings of a letter in French.
Emily’s lounging took on the look of someone double-jointed with her right leg slid off the sofa and her left one lifted and bent, its stockinged foot pressed against the back of the couch. She made a feeble effort of controlling her skirt for modesty’s sake. “It’s rather pleading.”
“Entreating,” Anne corrected as she knew Emily would appreciate.
Emily winked. “If you say so.”
“Let’s hear it entreat then,” Charlotte challenged.
Anne didn’t want to read the poem out loud and spoil the evening with dread of what she was going back to the next day. For a moment, she considered sharing a little of Passages instead, an excerpt that was well-worked and entertaining. Sensing her sister’s impatience, she stood with one of her journals, opening it to its middle and flipping a few pages further. With a slow, almost tiptoeing stride, she recited as she moved around the table, because of the limited space brushing Charlotte’s back with each passing by.
“‘God. If this indeed be all that Life can show to me; if on my aching brow may fall no freshening dew from Thee; if no brighter light than this the lamp of hope may glow, and I may only dream of bliss and wake to weary woe—’”
Emily sighed as dramatically as she never naturally did.
“You always cheer us so.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I won’t continue.” Anne had reached her chair after a second circling.
“No, go on. The writing itself is lovely.”
“‘If friendship’s solace must decay, when other joys are gone, and love must keep so far away—’”
“Enough.” Charlotte groaned.
“Not for me.” Emily threw her head back and closed her eyes.
Anne continued, realizing the poem was quite good and nearly as she intended. However, she hesitated when she reached the fourth verse, mustering up the courage to take a risk.
“Vice and sin?” Emily echoed. “Nothing to do with anyone we know, of course.”
“That’s it for now. I have yet to perfect the rest of it.”
[image error]
Illustration by DM Denton from “Without the Veil Between”
I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
~ Anne Brontë, from her introduction to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
[image error]
Title-page of the first edition, 1848
I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would be less interesting.
~ Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
[image error]
Happy Birthday, Anne Brontë
and
thank you
for one of the most extraordinary and transformational
writing experiences of my life!
[image error]© 2018 Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
January 15, 2018
Without The Veil Between: Anne Brontë – Book Review
While I ponder and process a new blog post, I will be sharing some reviews of my new novel, Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit.
Here is one that, besides being eloquently written, displays such intelligent and sensitive engagement with the novel. It is from fine author, Mary Clark. I hope, if this review takes you over to her blog, you will check out her publications listed on the side bar: “My Books” and “Poetry”.
Without The Veil Between Paperback
Without The Veil Between Kindle
Early in Diane Denton’s book the young curate, William Weightman, says to Anne Brontë: “You must find such satisfaction in being able to capture those moments the rest of us let slip away and sometimes aren’t aware of to begin with.” This is an essential part of Denton’s own gift. With this ability she is able to enter the world of a shy artist who lived in the shadows of her father, brother, and sisters, and in the light of a determined and insightful intellect. Anne Brontë set herself a more difficult task than her famous sisters, Charlotte and Emily. She was on a course of an artist whose subject was her life. Making this even more difficult, she sought to achieve emotional and mental stability.
Denton shows us the tensions in the austere home of the Reverend Brontë, the…
View original post 556 more words
December 24, 2017
Music on Christmas Morning (Revisited)
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
My vision for Without the Veil Between, Anne Bronte: A Fine and Subtle Spirit was to explore and expand the “asides” of Anne’s life in and out of the context of the more familiar Brontë narrative: one being her fondness for music (a subject that, as those who have read my first two novels will know, I love to write about).
At an early age, along with her siblings, she was taken by her father to concerts performed by the Haworth Operatic Society and in nearby Keighley. In the mid-1830s Reverend Brontë surprised his children by purchasing an upright cabinet piano made by John Green of Soho Square, London.
[image error]
Piano in Patrick Bronte’s study in Haworth Parsonage
Their father arranged for them to have a few lessons at the parsonage, but mostly they were self-taught. Emily, whom Anne was extremely close to, is said to have been the most accomplished pianist in the family. Charlotte’s friend (and to them all) Ellen Nussey wrote of Emily playing “with brilliance and precision.”
“Come on.” Emily dropped the shoes she had seemed so desperate to find and, not allowing Anne to put on hers, pulled her sister out of the rocking chair.
“What?”
“It’s time for Mendelsohn.”
“On the piano? It’s almost eleven.”
“Who’s to mind?”
With their father and Charlotte away, Emily couldn’t be stopped from opening the windows in almost every room and occupying herself on the cottage piano in the Reverend’s study any time she pleased. Yet, Anne, who rarely went out of the house without Emily and then only into the front garden or the church to refresh the flowers by the pulpit, hadn’t heard Emily playing, not even the music Anne had given her for her birthday.
“You’ve been practicing. But when?”
“In the wee hours, as lightly as I walk about.”
“Oh. That explains—” Anne didn’t reveal her entire thought, standing to the side and holding the flickering light that illuminated the sheets Emily hardly needed to look at. She wondered how in the dark of a new day with a candle placed precariously on the corner of the piano’s lid, Emily managed to follow the score well enough to commit it to memory as well as perfecting by heart how gracefully and unpretentiously it sang without words. Anne heard it then, as she had in her dreams, something of William in its wordlessness, something of herself in its longings, something almost tender about Emily that except in her constant forgiveness of Keeper might otherwise never be revealed.
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
Auld Lang Sang as copied by Anne Bronte
Anne also played, as Ellen Nussey claimed, preferring “soft melodies and vocal music. She sang a little; her voice was weak, but very sweet in tone.” As a governess, Anne gave music and singing lessons, purchasing much of the music herself. At home, in June 1843, on a brief holiday from her position at Thorpe Green, she began copying her favorite music into a blank notebook she had probably purchased on a visit to York with her employers, the Robinsons, spending a fairly substantial sum in relation to her earnings.
Anne was on the second page of filling the music manuscript book she had only counted on costing her three shillings and six pence, not the favorable opinion of her favorite sister. Her last trip to York, longer than when she and Branwell had met their father there and this time sanctioned for shopping, allowed Anne almost two hours away from the Misses Robinson. While they spent their time and money on dresses, hats, and confections, Anne browsed a bookstore newly opened in the cathedral city, considering any expenditure carefully. She finally settled on two purchases: a German dictionary and a fabric-bound book for music copying that would also aid in her teaching, more of a justification than reason for buying it. Anne wanted to make the music she loved compactly portable, even without access to a pianoforte, available for performances in her head—preferably so, for then her fingers were agile and her voice wasn’t weak.
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
The Shambles, York
Anne’s brother, Branwell, also had musical ability and played the organ from time to time for services in the Haworth Parish church. Unfortunately, none of his talents, including writing and painting, could override his self-pitying, self-destructive personality, which spiraled him into deadly addictions to drink and drugs.
[William’s] arm around her brother’s shoulder, assuring Branwell his return to the organ wasn’t spoiled by him losing his place in the processional hymn All Praise to Our Redeeming Lord and struggling with uncertain pedaling and clumsy fingering in Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, was an embrace of [Anne], too.
“In the end, my friend, you found your way,” William’s cheeks were almost crimson, little streaks of sweat on them, “with Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal.”
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
Haworth Church and Parsonage
I try not to project myself into any historical person I write about, hoping to understand and interpret him/her as objectively and historically accurate as possible. However, fiction (and even biographies) beg some subjectivity in order to go deeper than the facts and explore, for example, his/her motivations, hesitations, impulses and emotions. Although I chose to write about Anne, I never expected to feel such affinity with her on so many levels.
One of the ways I related to Anne was in how her creative talents affected her life as she developed as a writer. Writing became her work, her vocation: she knew it was her most significant means of expression if not her easiest. It involved much of her time, and, also, her mental, emotional and even physical energy, didn’t come easy, was often frustrating and misunderstood. She had to do it, no matter the trials it put her through, and it seems there were times, especially in the composing of her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, that she was nearly buried in it.
As her sister Charlotte wrote in a letter: ‘I would fain hope that [Anne’s] health is a little stronger than it was – and her spirits a little better, but she leads much too sedentary a life, and is continually sitting stooping either over a book or over her desk – it is with difficulty one can prevail on her to take a walk or induce her to converse.’
In contrast music and art and Anne’s bond to nature were truly enjoyment, allowing her times when she could look up from her weighty sense of purpose and view a lighter, more leisurely way of being.
[image error]
Anne Bronte’s unfinished portrait of her dog, Flossy
Certainly, in difficult times, such as her years as governess at Blake Hall and then Thorpe Green, including Branwell’s disastrous stint as tutor at the latter location, music was a relaxing and pleasant pastime that interrupted Anne’s struggles with her health, duties, and worry and embarrassment over her brother’s behavior.
Like at the Spa in Scarborough, during one of her summer holidays there with her employers, the Robinson’s …
Nothing was more calming to her lungs than sitting among other reverent music lovers—which Elizabeth and Lydia were not—in the Spa’s turreted Saloon, melting into a Mozart symphony, an air by Weber, and a Rossini overture. At least, as the music swelled and soothed and satisfied, she was unaware of any physical discomfort from the afternoon’s rising temperature let alone her earlier asthma episode.
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
The Spa, Scarborough, Yorkshire
Or on a sultry first day of rush-bearing, a magnificent Oratorio concert right in Haworth and her own church, St. Michaels and All Angels …
The voice of Mendelssohn’s Christ in three-part chorus rose, not only creating a miraculous sound but also a haloed light.
Anne wanted to be in that moment. Such bountiful music, the church filled with contemplative commentary drawn from the New and Old Testaments, chorales in the manner of Bach, fanfares punctuating more tranquil instrumentals and vocals. It was quite a trick for the orchestra, even reduced as it was, to fit into the church, the violins arranged around the cellos and violas, the strings in front of the winds, and the brass elevated at the very back. The choir was in front of the instrumentalists, sopranos and tenors on the right, mezzo sopranos, altos, and basses on the left.
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
Rush-bearing 1821
Or during an impulsive trip to London with Charlotte, which as unexpectedly found her at the opera in Covent Garden …
Enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about critics or how you must answer them, or Papa or Emily or Branwell … or anything to disturb the wonder of this unexpected adventure …
She didn’t think Mr. Smith Williams was reading her thoughts but wanting to witness her enthusiastic participation in the custom of applauding for the conductor as he quickly stepped into the pit, took his place and a bow, and turned to prompt the orchestra’s tuning up.
There was some movement behind the curtain, the footlights burning brighter as Anne’s attention focused on the stage. “This is beyond my dreams. Beyond what I deserve.” She lifted her hands to her cheeks flushed, as Mr. Smith Williams might assume, with pleasure and embarrassment, but really just the warmth and closeness of the theater.
“Oh, Miss Brontë, you’re more than worthy to be here.” Mr. Smith Williams was prompted by Anne’s admission to make one of his own. “I think you’re a perfect companion for attending the opera, for I suspect you understand how music—”
“Kindly bids us wake. It calls us, with an angel’s voice, to wake, worship, and rejoice.”
Without the Veil Between © 2017 DM Denton
[image error]
Italian Opera House Covent Garden, London
Anne’s Music on Christmas Morning was included in the poetry anthology she and her sisters published in the spring of 1846. It reflects Anne’s piety and love of music, words and nature, using all to paint a lyrically poignant bridge between heaven and earth.
[image error]
Whether you read this post and Anne’s poem on the morning it was written in honor of, or at any other time, I want to offer my heartfelt appreciation for your visit to my little space in the universe along with wishes for many blessings to be yours in this season however you mark it.
Peace and Love
[image error]
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biographical Historical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Women Writers, Classic Writers, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Music, Novel, Poetry
December 18, 2017
Farewell to thee! but not farewell
[image error]
I wrote about the closeness (“like twins … inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption” – Ellen Nussey) of Anne and Emily Brontë in a previous post: The Very Closest Sympathy.
Writing the scenes of Emily’s death in my newly released novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit happened to correspond to a time last winter (December 2016 – January 2017) when I was losing my beloved Gabey-kitty (his brother Darcy passed a few months later).
[image error]
‘When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry . . .’
~ Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Or, as in my case at the time, prose … well, poetic prose, for I needed the melancholy music of the words I was using to express the inexpressible.
“‘Powerful’. ‘Interesting’. ‘Coarse’. ‘Brutal’. ‘Morbid’. Do we write with any such adjectives in mind?” Anne had been reading through the reviews of Tenant she had collected, portions aloud to Emily, especially those that might stir any fight left in her. “Or go through the tormenting process of writing a novel for ‘reveling in scenes of debauchery’?”
Emily was quiet lying sideways on the sofa in the parlor. Since Anne had repositioned the pillow borrowed from one or other of their beds, Emily’s head had slipped to bow against her frail neck. Her torso was curled so her length was contracted, no definition to her arms or bosom within the sleeves and bodice of her dress, no movement under its skirt since Anne had lifted her sister’s skeletal legs up more than an hour before.
Anne wondered if Emily was still pulled by the brutishness and beauty of the moors and the similar punishment and reward of writing. Did a look out a window or opening of a door remind her of what she was missing, and new Gondal rascals or Heathcliffs or Catherines find her imagination receptive? Anne longed for one more conversation with her, whether playful or intense, one more chance to agree, argue and confirm they were good for each other’s inspiration, intellects and souls. Anne ached for one more meeting with the Emily who was wiry but robust, strong like a man and simple like a child, her head full of logic and fantastic stories at the same time, her choices uncompromising, as were her passions. If only Emily’s life could return to being routine and yet so exceptional, filled with writing brilliantly while she was bread making or sewing or everyone else was asleep, making music like a perfect lady and rambling the Pennine way like a free and easy lad.
Instead, Anne had to helplessly watch as Emily continued to disappear through those December days and nights. On that Monday evening, a week before Christmas, her stillness, half-open eyes and mouth, and leaning towards resignation indicated there was only one way she would be released from consumption’s captivity.
~ from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
[image error]
One of the illustrations I did for “Without the Veil Between”
Farewell
by Anne Brontë
Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.
If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.
That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.
That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; —
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.
Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.
And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Available in Print:
amazon.com
barnesandnoble.com
And for
Kindle
[image error]
Anne and Emily from a painting by their brother, Branwell
I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!
~ from Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biographical Historical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Women Writers, Classic Writers, Famous Deaths, Fiction, Literary Fiction, New Books, Novel, Women Writers Tagged: Anne Bronte, Bronte Parsonage, Bronte200, Emily Bronte, Emily Bronte's Death, Haworth West Yorkshire
November 30, 2017
Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton
Without the Veil Between
Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
by DM Denton
A new novel about Anne Brontë
(youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily)
Poet and Novelist
Author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
[image error]
This new novel gives us Anne. Not Anne, the ‘less gifted’ sister of Charlotte and Emily (although we meet them too as convincingly drawn individuals); nor the Anne who ‘also wrote two novels’, but Anne herself, courageous, committed, daring and fiercely individual: a writer of remarkable insight, prescience and moral courage whose work can still astonish us today.
~ Deborah Bennison, Bennison Books
Read the full review …
Available in Paperback
BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM
BUY AT AMAZON.CO.UK
Whole passages are beautifully written: meticulous, poetic, luminous, and powerful. I can’t think of anyone better suited to bring us into the world and the life of the sensitive, creative, and quietly courageous Anne Brontë.
Read full review …
~ Mary Clark, author of Tally: An Intuitive Life, Miami Morning and Racing the Sun
Also available for Kindle
BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM
You can turn your phone or tablet into a book!
The Kindle App is available for iOS, Android, Mac and PC
Click here
BUY NOW AT BARNESANDNOBLE.COM
Will be available for NOOK soon
Anne was, at least to the modern sensibility, a great novelist in spite of her contemporary reputation, and as she weaves her gentle spirit into dealing with the dissolution of her brother, her father’s loving distraction, and her two sisters’ determination to overcome the limitations of their sex in Victorian society, the reader gets a sense of how genius rose out of the tensions, love, and straining within the family itself.
Read the full review …
~ Thomas Davis, author of The Weirding Storm
***
Whole passages are beautifully written: meticulous, poetic, luminous, and powerful. I can’t think of anyone better suited to bring us into the world and the life of the sensitive, creative, and quietly courageous Anne Brontë.
Read full review …
~ Mary Clark, author of Tally: An Intuitive Life, Miami Morning and Racing the Sun
[image error]
The novel includes original illustrations by DM Denton
[image error]
Books can truly change our lives:
the lives of those who read them,
the lives of those who write them.
Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew
about the world and about themselves.
~ Lloyd Chudley Alexander, 1924 – 2007, American author
I hope you will read and enjoy
Without the Veil Between
Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
and, if you are so inclined,
share your thoughts in a review
Thank you!
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biographical Fiction, Classic Women Writers, Classic Writers, Historical Fiction, Illustration, New Books, Novel Tagged: Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte, Bronte Parsonage, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre, The Bronte Society, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights
November 9, 2017
Coming Attractions: “Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit” (Book Trailer)
So pleased to announce that it will soon be available in print, Kindle, and NOOK Book editions, published by All Things That Matter Press.
In the meantime, get a taste of the novel through its book’s trailer. Hope you will sit back for a few minutes and enjoy it, along with the music of Mendelssohn.
Thank you to Deborah Bennison of Bennison Books, Thomas Davis, author of The Weirding Storm, and Mary Clark, author of Tally, An Intuitive Life, Miami Morning, and Racing the Sun for words used in the text of this video. The music is Song Without Words, No 46 in C minor, OP 102 by Mendelssohn, Public Domain, Royalty Free music from Musopen
You can read more about the novel, including pre-publication reviews, on its Book Launch page where there is a link to add your name to be notified via email of the release of the novel and, also, to enter to win a signed copy.
You can sign up directly here.
I can’t wait to offer the transforming journey I took with Anne Brontë to the world!
The novel’s publication has taken on even greater meaning as my beloved eighty-eight-year-old mom, who introduced me at a young age to the Brontës, slowly recovers from a serious infection that had her hospitalized for a number of days. She is now in rehab and, I pray, after getting more of her strength and mobility back, she will be able to come home again.
Those who have followed this blog for a while will know that my mom did some lovely artwork in the past. If you watch the video above you’ll realize how relevant roses are to the subject of Anne Brontë.
[image error]
Paintings by my mom, June, (left) and me Copyright 2015
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biographical Fiction, Books, Classic Writers, Fiction, Giveaway, Historical Fiction, Novel, Women Writers Tagged: Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte, Book Trailer, Bronte Parsonage Museum, Bronte200, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, The Bronte Society, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
October 29, 2017
Impending Birth and Remembering a Death
by my wonderful publishers
All Things That Matter Press,
of my new novel
Without the Veil Between
Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
[image error]
Cover and Interior Illustrations by DM Denton
Still time to add your name to my email list
for notification of the novel’s release
and a chance to win a signed copy!
On this day, October 29th, in 1842, Elizabeth Branwell, aunt to Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë, died.
In the summer of 1821, unmarried at the age of 45, she traveled to Haworth from her native Penzance to be by the side of her dying sister, Maria, wife of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and mother to his six children. After Maria Bronte’s death in September 1821, Elizabeth Branwell stayed on to temporarily help with the care of the Brontë brood, which then included older sisters Maria and Elizabeth who would also die within a few years. When it seemed her brother-in-law was unlikely to remarry, Aunt Elizabeth Branwell took on the permanent role of surrogate mother to the Brontë children. Although it meant enduring the often harsh conditions and seclusion of West Yorkshire, she choose duty, from, I believe, what was a great love for her nieces and nephew, over an easier life in a milder climate, pleasant society, and the familiarity of her native Cornwall.
Aunt Elizabeth was the only “mother” Anne could remember, as a child sharing a bed with her and greatly influenced by her piety, stoicism and sacrifice.
Charlotte and Emily were at school in Brussels at the time of their aunt’s death. Anne, who was governess at Thorpe Green near York, made it home shortly after her funeral. Branwell was the only one of the Brontë children who was with her through her brief but horrible demise from a constriction of the bowel. After her death, he wrote to a friend, ‘I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonizing suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood.’
Here is an excerpt from Without the Veil Between, set the Christmas after Aunt Elizabeth Branwell’s death:
Death had intruded on them all, but Branwell and their father had spent the most time with it and were physically and emotionally wearied by its visit not once but twice in a little over two months. Anne and her sisters weren’t spared its ruthlessness, although with the loss of her aunt, Anne found some relief, not from grief but the concealment of it.
“However did we all fit in this room?” Charlotte prompted Anne to find courage, even a little delight, in remembering.
“We pushed up the side table, didn’t we?”
“Yes, I believe so. And Branny straddled its pedestal, could hardly eat for its wobbling, and sweated as he was so close to the fire.”
Their brother didn’t look up, his plate as full as it was half an hour before.
“Aunt hated when we teased him,” Charlotte continued to talk about her brother as though he wasn’t there, knowing how to both irritate and indulge him. “She doted on him more than she did you, Anne.”
“She knew his weaknesses,” Reverend Brontë immediately clarified, “but at the end his devotion.”
Branwell spoke softly with his hand over his mouth.
His father reached across the table to pull it down. “Say again.”
“I don’t think so. How could she? Her suffering, such pain as I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”
“She’s not suffering now, my boy.”
“Just regretting.”
Anne, who was sitting next to him, stroked his hand crumbling a piece of bread.
“Oh, I think she’s comfortably settled on her heavenly throne thinking she did her best and we’re no longer her problem.” Charlotte wasn’t eating much either.
“Not how she wasted her life on us?”
“Well, you must let such a question influence your own choices, Son,” Reverend Brontë spoke without a hint of guilt in any reference to his wife’s sister, who had saved him from foolishly continuing his search for a second wife and his children from being motherless, although not any of them from being sinless.
Copyright 2017 by DM Denton
[image error]
Silhouette of a Young Aunt Elizabeth Branwell
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biographical Historical Fiction, Classic Women Writers, Classic Writers, Excerpt, Famous Deaths, Novel Tagged: All Things That Matter Press, Anne Bronte, Aunt Branwell, Branwell Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, DM Denton, Emily Bronte, Haworth, Win a signed copy, Without the Veil Between
September 24, 2017
Branwell Brontë: as Broken as all Their Hearts Were
[image error]
Branwell Brontë, Self-Portrait
To commemorate, here is an excerpt from my upcoming novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit. Click here to add your name to my email list, be notified of its release (late 2017) and enter to win a signed copy.
(Please keep in mind, the novel has yet to go through its final edits):
How could any of them know the extent of his weaknesses before they manifested in such a way as to irreversibly ruin him and torture them all—in Anne’s case, prove she had done more harm than good by trying to help him?
Anne pushed her thoughts in a higher direction. “There might be joy and fulfillment for him yet, if he’ll try to receive it.”
“Even our father seems to have given up on his eternal salvation.”
“I don’t think so.”
Anne wanted to feel as sympathetically close to Charlotte as they were in the flesh while they sat on the bed they shared, both in their nightgowns and caps but neither making a motion to get under the covers.
Emily walked up and down the hallway, it seemed for hours, to the drone of her father praying, which was some comfort to Anne. Even covered with blankets Charlotte complained she felt cold. She said she going to throw up, but never needed the chamber pot for that purpose and finally fell asleep.
Anne couldn’t and needing something to do assumed her father hadn’t interrupted his vigil at Branwell’s bedside to wind the long-cased clock.
Emily was leaning against the door frame of the room where, Anne hoped, father and son might bond in dying as they hadn’t in living. Emily’s eyes were closed, her mouth moving, her words muffled, Anne making them out in their repetition.
“You’ve killed yourself … you’ve killed yourself … you’ve killed yourself …”
“Oh, Emily,” Anne reacted softly, walking towards her sister, knowing she wouldn’t be able to comfort her. She had to try. “He may yet recover.”
“You don’t believe such nonsense.”
The expectation of another skeptical reaction sent Anne to the clock, the action she could take to keep it going, and the struggle with her own faith she didn’t want anyone, especially not Emily, to witness.
“Oh, luv.” Tabby startled her into dropping the winding key, but immediately relieved her of holding back her tears.
They hugged. Tabby was grown more bosomy in a frill-less, high-necked nightgown, her face becoming redder. The old woman wiped a billowing sleeve across her face, allowed herself a few more sniffles and walked up to Branwell’s room, stroking Emily’s arm before she went in.
“He sleeps quiet,” she reported, touching Emily’s shoulder this time, reaching out to take Anne’s hand. “Rev’r’nd be restin’, too. Y’uns shud get sum sleep.”
Emily shook her head and went downstairs.
Tabby noticed Martha was in the hallway and waved her back to their little room. “Need tha up early, Missy.”
Charlotte was also awake, sitting in bed with the covers pulled to her chin, panic in her eyes.
“No change.” Anne slid in alongside her, lying on her back, which wasn’t comfortable. She needed to listen for what she hoped she wouldn’t hear.
It was the unexpected Charlotte responded to first. “What’s that? It’s not—”
“It is.”
Emily usually performed the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata nimbly with soft dynamics and reflective expression, letting it rise and fall like a singer’s perfect breathing and articulation. That night, just past the new moon, too far from old joys, too close to last wishes, one of the darkest nights of the month and their lives, her playing was labored, hesitant, even harsh, as broken as all their hearts were.
Copyright © 2017 by DM Denton
[image error]
Branwell Brontë’s caricature (1847) of himself lying in bed and being summoned by death.
I sit, this evening, far away,
From all I used to know,
And nought reminds my soul to-day
Of happy long ago.
Unwelcome cares, unthought-of fears,
Around my room arise;
I seek for suns of former years
But clouds o’ercast my skies.
Yes-Memory, wherefore does thy voice
Bring old times back to view,
As thou wouldst bid me not rejoice
In thoughts and prospects new?
I’ll thank thee, Memory, in the hour
When troubled thoughts are mine-
For thou, like suns in April’s shower,
On shadowy scenes wilt shine.
I’ll thank thee when approaching death
Would quench life’s feeble ember,
For thou wouldst even renew my breath
With thy sweet word ‘Remember’!
~ Patrick Branwell Brontë
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Biography, Classic Women Writers, Classic Writers, Excerpt, Famous Deaths, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novel Tagged: Anne Bronte, Branwell Bronte, Bronte death, Bronte200, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Without the Veil Between Anne Bronte A Fine and Subtle Spirit
September 18, 2017
The Brontës, A Destination for the World
As I research ways to reach out with news of my upcoming novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit, it has become evident there are an impressive number of Brontë aficionados worldwide.
Of course, the Brontë Society and Parsonage Museum have long been the pride of West Yorkshire and its natives. But, as it was for me since the threshold of puberty when I first became aware of Haworth‘s famous literary siblings, their home for most of their lives has long been a dream destination for countless visitors from hundreds and thousands of miles, oceans, continents and centuries away.
[image error]
Brontë Parsonage, Haworth, llustration by DM Denton Copyright 2017
Once the identity of the author of Jane Eyre was no longer masked by a pseudonym, fans of the book started turning up in Haworth. A few years after Charlotte’s death, spurred on by the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her, even more came, many from America where Jane Eyre was very popular. The local shops looked to benefit, for example, by selling photographs of the family that probably weren’t. Patriarch Patrick Brontë even began cutting up Charlotte’s letters in order to fulfill requests for samples of her handwriting.
[image error]
The narrative of the Brontë sisters’ lives and the place they passed from childhood to adulthood in became as important to their legacy as the stories they penned. Not everyone agreed it should be so and others were skeptical but open to being convinced. Henry James (1843—1916) thought it unfortunate that the “beguiled fascination” with the Brontës’ “tragic history, their loneliness and poverty of life” got more attention than critical reaction to their writings. In 1904 Virginia Woolf (1882—1941) wrote an extensive account of and reflection on her “expedition to Haworth” to discover if, as Mrs. Gaskell implied, “Haworth and the Brontës (were) somehow inextricably mixed. The curiosity (is) only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books. This justification you have for a pilgrimage to the home and country of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.”
I don’t believe searching for Charlotte, Emily and Anne through the rooms they lived in, church they worshipped in, pathways they walked, objects they used, books they read, clothes they wore, music they collected, pets they had, or weather they enjoyed and endured conflicts with discovering them as writers or detracts from what they wrote. If anything, their outer and inner worlds: the “poverty” (as Mr. James called it), constraints and remoteness of their lives, the struggles of their passions and intellect, the tragedies that took young loved ones from them (not unusual in families of the time), the persistence and fearlessness of their imaginations and efforts all constructed the foundation and framework that rose into the building of their poetry and prose to stand the test of time and with the best.
[image error]
Crowd at opening of Parsonage Museum in1895
“The museum is certainly rather a pallid and inanimate collection of objects. An effort ought to be made to keep things out of these mausoleums, but the choice often lies between them and destruction, so that we must be grateful for the care which has preserved much that is, under any circumstances, of deep interest. Here are many autograph letters, pencil drawings, and other documents. But the most touching case – so touching that one hardly feels reverent in one’s gaze – is that which contains the little personal relics of the dead woman. The natural fate of such things is to die before the body that wore them, and because these, trifling and transient though they are, have survived, Charlotte Brontë the woman comes to life, and one forgets the chiefly memorable fact that she was a great writer. Her shoes and her thin muslin dress have outlived her. One other object gives a thrill; the little oak stool which Emily carried with her on her solitary moorland tramps, and on which she sat, if not to write, as they say, to think what was probably better than her writing.”
~ Virginia Woolf, Haworth, November 1904
The original Brontë Society was founded in 1893. Two years later a small museum opened above the Yorkshire Penny Bank on Main Street in Haworth. Brontë treasures began to be donated and also obtained by the Society at auction, monetary bequests allowing the Society to purchase them. The museum soon saw around 10,000 visitors. It wasn’t until 1928 that the deed for the Parsonage was put into the Society’s hands by Haworth native wool merchant and Society member Sir James Roberts, who had purchased it for £3,000 from the Church. A lot of Brontë memorabilia had found its way to the US and in 1926 a large collection that included Bronte manuscripts, letters, first editions and personal effects was willed to the Society by Henry Houston, a Philadelphia publisher.
Brontë possessions are still being found and coming to the museum from far and wide. In 2011 Charlotte’s mahogany desk was donated anonymously (it was known to have been owned by William Law, who collected rare Bronte material subsequently inherited by his nephew, its whereabouts a mystery after Sir Alfred Law’s death in 1939 until the desk and a few other precious items turned up). In 2015 the Society obtained the mahogany drop-leaf table, complete with ink blots, a large candle burn and a letter E carved into it, the sisters wrote on.
[image error]
A table at which the Brontë sisters wrote has been brought back to the family home in Yorkshire after being purchased with a grant of £580,000.
No, there’s nothing new about the international interest in the Brontës. Less than a year after Charlotte’s death a German version of Jane Eyre—Die Waise vin Lowood (The Orphan of Lowood) was staged in New York. According to a biographer of Chekhov, the Russian writer was likely influenced by Olga Peterson’s biography of the Brontës when he wrote his play The Three Sisters. This link takes you to a Wikipedia page that lists adaptations of Jane Eyre, including, in the 1950s, a Hindi, Hong Kong, and, in the 1960s and 70s a couple of Mexican and Indian movie versions.
[image error]
In the 1970s, the French produced a film, the aesthetic and atmospheric Les Soeurs Brontë, which takes a lot of liberties but I couldn’t help but be hypnotized by.
[image error]
Still from Les Soeurs Brontë
Isabelle Adjani as Emily, Isabelle Huppert as Anne and Marie-France Pisier as Charlotte
The French also did an adaptation of Wuthering Heights: Hurlevent (Howling Wind) in 1985, and so did director Yoshishige Yoshida in 1988: Arashi ga Oka, neither of which I have seen (the former saved to my yet-to-be-released Netflix list). In 2009 a Japanese musical adaptation of Jane Eyre was released and I have to admit I was really drawn in by the video clips on YouTube:
Exhibit notes and footpaths signs in Japanese reflect the thousands from Japan who visit Haworth and the Parsonage and make the walks to the Brontë waterfall and Top Withens yearly, the largest group from a specific foreign (to the UK) country. There is a great article from The Japan Times titled Why are Japanese Women still Bewitched by the Brontës. Here’s the article’s opening:
Some years ago a sassy Osaka lady asked me to introduce her to the pleasures of Western literature. I duly handed her a variety of classic books, including “The Turn of the Screw,” “Heart of Darkness,” “Lolita” and “A Study in Scarlet.” They were all methodically if unenthusiastically read, but when I presented her with a copy of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” she devoured the book, raved about it, rereading it again and again.
Japan seem to be besotted with the three Bronte sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It’s a fascination that goes beyond reading and imagining. A disproportionately high number of Japanese women visit the Bronte’s home village of Haworth in the north of England each year, a pilgrimage …
The article explores possible reasons why Japanese women love the Brontës’ novels. I particularly liked, and, dare to admit, related to one:
The extravagance of the heroine Catherine’s passionate behavior and her ardor for the enigmatic Heathcliff is one aspect of the novel’s appeal to Japanese female readers, according to Pascoe.
“An older Japanese woman told me that the novel filled her with longing,” she says, “both for the foreign English locale and for the possibility of being a different, less subdued kind of person.”
Read full article …
The Bronte Society of Japan has its own Facebook page, website and blog. On the latter the administrators recently and very kindly added a post, in Japanese and English, about my upcoming novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit, which you can view by clicking here.
There is also a very active Australian Brontë Association that . The ABA is independent of the (UK) Brontë Society but it grew out of a group of Australian members of the Brontë Society and … still maintain(s) strong links with the parent body.
And, of course, there is a US chapter. Because of the number of American Chapter members and their wide dispersion regions were created. Each region includes several states under a Brontë Society regional representative who acts as a liaison between their members and the American Chapter Representative.
On of my favorite foreign Brontë groups, which I discovered some time ago, is The Sisters’ Room, A Bronte Inspired Blog, Italian with a mirror English version that is administrated by two lovely young women, Selene Chilla and Serena Di Battista, who travel with others from Italy to Haworth on a regular basis. They met at university, where (they) developed a true and deep passion for the English language, literature and culture. Moreover, (they) have always been interested in the Brontë sisters’ lives, works and places, and over time this passion grew and grew … They also have a Facebook Page where they have kindly shared news of my upcoming Anne novel.
The Sisters’ Room works in conjunction with the Brontë society in Italy, which was born in 1997 when its two founders met at a conference called The Legacy of the Brontës organized by the British Council in Bologna. You can read more about its history here.
There is also a Brussels Bronte Group. Thanks to its administrators for listing Without the Veil Between on its Recent and Upcoming Books page.
I’m sure there are more international groups/organizations/fans to discover. Knowing there is so much interest in the subject of Without the Veil Between is a new experience on the publishing journey for me, my first two novels focusing on more obscure figures in music and history. Hopefully, the global interest in the Brontës will translate into a larger readership than I have experienced before.
Readers are often fans of Authors, but I, myself, am a fan of readers. They are the ones who breathe life into the pages that we give birth to, after all.
~ Janae Mitchell
[image error]
Visit the novel’s new book launch page.
Add your name to my email list to be notified of its release and enter a drawing to receive a free signed copy.
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Classic Writers, Fiction, Giveaway, Historical Fiction, Women Writers, Writing Tagged: A Bronte Inspired Blog, Anne Bronte, Australian Bronte Association, Bronte USA, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre, The Bronte Society, The Bronte Society of Japan, The Sisters' Room A Bronte Inspired Blog, Wuthering Heights
August 27, 2017
Illustrating Words
An illustration that does not complement a story, in the end, will become but a false idol. Since we cannot possibly believe in an absent story, we will naturally begin believing in the picture itself.
~ Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature
[image error]
The origin of the word “illustration” is late Middle English (in the sense ‘illumination; spiritual or intellectual enlightenment’): via Old French from Latin illustratio(n- ), from the verb illustrate. Wikipedia.
Illustrators create visual representations, of their own work or that of others, in many mediums and industries: books, magazines, newspapers, poster art, advertisement, greeting cards, film, fashion, medicine and other sciences, manufacturing and technical design. Woodcutting, engraving, lithography, pen-and-ink, charcoal, metalpoint, pastels, colored ink, pens and pencils, watercolor and acrylic paints have all served them well. Today a trip to any art supply store is overwhelming—but exciting!—because of the wide-range of materials available for drawing and painting. Currently, digital options for making and adjusting images are constantly developing and increasing.
I “became” an illustrator, or at least got to the point of consciously being one, by accident rather than intent. I had done art most of my life, but never to be an artist as such. In the early 1980s, for my own pleasure and, frankly, sanity, inspired by a series about Edith Holden (1871-1920) and her nature notes, which, in book form and film, would become The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, I embarked on a couple of nature journals. Tiny and private, wrapped in plastic for protection, worried over in case they were damaged or lost, eventually they found a public life because of the miracle of all-in-one (scanning) printers and, in 2011, my decision to begin blogging. I used my journal illustrations to accompany the poetry and prose I shared. When All Things That Matter Press took on my first novel, A House Near Luccoli, it seemed natural to use my own artwork for its cover. I’m so grateful they allowed me to. Now three more covers later (two my own and one done for Dancing in the Rain, a poetry anthology by Christine Moran published by Bennison Books), my accidental artist has ventured into the pages of my third novel.
[image error]
Section of one of the illustrations from “Without the Veil Between” Copyright 2017 by DM Denton
Having just finished a number of black and white (and shades of grey) illustrations for my upcoming Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit, while delving into research for my next fiction work about Christina Rossetti, Victorian poetess and sister of Pre-Raphaelite illustrator (painter and poet) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it seemed a perfect time to explore the collaboration of artists and authors and the history of illustration production.
[image error]
Expression through the combination of words and pictures has ancient roots, art clarifying and embellishing text bringing to mind the painstakingly illuminated monastic manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
[image error]
The invention of mechanical printing by Johannes Gutenberg in 1452 took book production out of sacred seclusion. Initially, block books were the way forward, text and illustrations cut into the same wooden block. By the mid-16th century, copper-plating engraving and etching offered better definition and more detail.
Book illustration was established as an art in the 18th century and, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, took hold by the 19th, printing processes improving rapidly with more publications seen by more of the public.
In the early 1800s, lithography, the process of printing from a flat surface treated to repel the ink except where it is required for printing, offered increased texture and accuracy because the artist could draw directly onto the printing plate.
[image error]
[image error]
Chromolithography, color lithography, was widely used for postcards and other printed products requiring color, such as playing cards.
[image error]
Many names and nationalities were associated with the ever-growing popularity of illustrated newspapers, books and magazines. I mention only a few.
Thomas Bewick [image error](1753-1828), best known for his A History of British Birds, helped to popularize the printing of illustrations using wood, adapting metal engraving tools to cut hard boxwood to produce printing blocks for metal typeset that were more durable than traditional woodcuts and lowered the cost for higher quality illustrations.
[image error]
George Cruikshank (1792-1878), who depicted children as miniature adults, did the plates for all twenty-four illustrations in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist originally published in installments between February 1837 and April 1839. Dickens worked closely with many other illustrators (i.e. Hablot Knight Browne – Phiz, 1815-1882, John Leech, 1817-1864, and George Cattermole, 1800 – 1868 ) and was very involved in the characters, settings and scenes depicted, even offering his thoughts on the colors of what he envisioned, although the drawings were in black and white. Only Hard Times and Great Expectations were originally published without illustrations.
John Tenniel’s illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), and Lindley Sambourne’s for Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863) are some of the loveliest woodblock contributions of the mid-19th century, a time when wood engraving dominated.
[image error]
[image error]
Lithography (including color lithography) remained popular until the end of the 19th century, while a decade before the advent of the 20th century the photomechanical process—artwork transferred to printing plates through photographic means—found its footing in the book illustrating industry, moving image printing towards its future digital course.
[image error]
In the 19th and 20th centuries there were a number of artistic movements that affected the design and illustration of books. Aubrey Beardsley was a proponent of Aestheticism and Art Nouveau, influenced by Japanese woodcuts and often portraying grotesque and erotic subject matter.
[image error]
Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti photographed by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll)
Many of the Pre-Raphaelites painters were also illustrators, most notably John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt, Arthur Hughes, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the latter, as above-mentioned, the brother of the subject of my next novel, Christina Rossetti. They brought the vivid lines, vibrancy, naturalness, emotionality and even mysticism of their paintings to black and white wood engraved book illustrations.
Awaiting her brother’s creations, Christina required much patience. But patient she was, devoted to him and his talent, and he eventually completed drawings for her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and the title page for her The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866).
[image error]
[image error]
Even when there wasn’t any literary reference for a picture he was doing, Dante Gabriel Rossetti would often create a text to inspire him.
[image error]
[image error]
At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the ‘what if – what then’ approach to writing and illustration.
~ Chris Van Allsburg, American illustrator and writer of children’s books
[image error]Of course, of special interest to me are those authors who did illustrations for their own work, including, in the case of children’s books: Beatrix Potter, Kate Greenaway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Maurice Sendak.
[image error]
I’m particularly fond of the flower fairies, paintings and poems, of Cicely Mary Barker.
Other writers who did their own illustrations included William Makepeace Thackeray, William Blake, TS Elliot, Evelyn Waugh, Rudyard Kipling, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
[image error]
It was an irresistible development of modern illustration (so largely photographic) that borders should be abandoned and the “picture” end only with the paper. This method may be suitable for photographs; but it is altogether inappropriate for the pictures that illustrate or are inspired by fairy-stories. An enchanted forest requires a margin, even an elaborate border.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien
[image error]There are those who feel illustrations in novels or accompanying poetry are a distraction, dictate the meaning, give away the narrative or define the look of a setting or character and, therefore, risk cheating the reader’s imagination. I believe illustration can actually expand it. That’s what happened when at the age of eleven I picked up my mom’s 1943 edition of Wuthering Heights with evocative woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg. My imagination was rewarded not cheated, my involvement with the writing, story, setting and characters deepened by the drawings. Even if I skipped ahead to see them, I became more curious and committed to finding out what they depicted.
Perhaps writing that makes illustrations unnecessary sets the stage for them to be all the more illuminating.
Children love illustrated books. Creative images pull them into the words and often encourage them to read more and can increase what I saw one article call “visual intelligence“. For me, a book is already a visual product, not only in terms of reading its words but, also, in its presentation, whether I hold it in print or on my Kindle device.
Why, it’s one o’ the books I bought at Partridge’s sale. They was all bound alike, it’s a good binding, you see, and I thought they’d be all good books. There’s Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living and Dying’ among ’em ; I read in it often of a Sunday.” (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer because his name was Jeremy); “and there ‘s a lot more of ’em, sermons mostly, I think ; but they ‘ve all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o’ one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn’t judge by th’ outside. This is a puzzlin’ world.
~ The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, 1900
My own approach to adding illustrations to Without the Veil Between was to offer hints and stir curiosity—set up and anticipation, while creating a distinct visual to enrich the reading experience. I’m new at this, so I can only hope I have succeeded as I set out to do.
I close with another teaser clip of an illustration from Without the Veil Between:
[image error]
Copyright 2017 by DM Denton
[image error]©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
Filed under: Art, Creative Writing, Illustration, Poetry, Prose, Writing Tagged: Book Illustration, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, History of Printing, Illustrators, Without the Veil Between Anne Bronte A Fine and Subtle Spirit
