What's up with Emily?

Emily, dir. & writ. Frances O'Connor - with Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething, Adrian Dunbar, Gemma Jones - (UK / USA, 2022)

Well, quite a bit, really. For a start, she and Branwell seem to be the only writers in the Brontë family, and his efforts aren't much cop - as she brutally informs him halfway through the film. Charlotte is a bespectacled geek who's put aside such childish things, and Anne's a poor waif who sways whichever way the wind is blowing. Which it does quite a bit, it being Yorkshire, and all of them stuck in some nowhere village in the back of beyond.

Patrick Branwell Brontë: Emily Brontë (1833)

A bit of opium helps, and some sex with the local curate, but nothing really touches the tired spot till she sits down one day and starts writing on a blank sheet of paper - and lo and behold, there's a novel called Wuthering Heights!

Joking apart, I did greatly enjoy the film, and even found it quite moving in parts, just so long as I could suspend the inner literary historian - never an easy task, I'm afraid. I mean, I can understand eliding over all that complicated business about the three sisters' pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (was 'Currer' really a common first name at the time? It does seem a particularly egregious choice ...)

Emily Brontë [as 'Ellis Bell']: Wuthering Heights (1847)

So, yes, I can see why, when a small package with a copy of her novel in it finally arrives in Haworth, it has the name 'Emily Brontë' on the titlepage. I don't like it, but I can, I suppose, accept it as a dramatic convenience.

But why was it necessary to edit out the other sisters' part in this literary revolution? Wuthering Heights first appeared in a three-volume package with Anne's novel Agnes Grey: two volumes for Emily, one volume for Anne. And owing to the dithering of their publisher, although it had been accepted earlier, their book didn't actually appear until after Charlotte's Jane Eyre had already come out from another firm and caused something of a literary sensation.

Frances O'Connor in Mansfield Park (1999)

So the film's decision to show Charlotte sitting down to write her own novel in the wake of Emily's death, and thus - in a sense - carrying on her work, just doesn't seem a necessary fiction to me. I share director (and script-writer) Frances O'Connor's fierce appreciation of Emily's genius - she is, for me, the pick of the bunch, and her novel a masterpiece on a quite different level from Charlotte's and Anne's more numerous works.

I also understand why Emma Mackey, the actor who plays her so spiritedly, feels so protective of her. Emily Brontë is a writer who inspires affection rather than simple respect: her work did, after all, have to make its way against the odds. Charlotte's preface to the second, 'corrected' edition of Wuthering Heights could certainly be said to be damning it with faint praise; and, in the case of her youngest sister Anne, Charlotte tried to suppress further editions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall altogether, as she considered its subject matter (substance addiction) unbecoming for a lady to acknowledge - let alone write about!

Edward Chitham & Derek Roper, ed.: The Poems of Emily Brontë (1996)

Emily was a genius or she was nothing. And I suppose it's for this reason that one can accept this fantasia on themes suggested by the life of Emily Brontë as a legitimate response to her. She's the only one of the three sisters who's ever been regarded as a poet of distinction, and the strange, clockwork machinery of her sublime Gothic novel belies any attempts that have been made since to write it off as hysterical melodrama.

Mrs. Gaskell: The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857 / 2009)

Mind you, there's also the usual battle of the biographers to take into account. In this case the Brontë mythos (for want of a better word) was established early on by Charlotte's first biographer, the novelist Mrs. Gaskell.

She it was who first revealed the identity of the three sisters, as well as the secrets of their childhood: the massive corpus of juvenilia Charlotte and Branwell produced about Angria, while Emily and Anne collaborated on their own stories of Gondal.

The Brontës: Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal (2010)

The editorial efforts of renowned literary forger Thomas J. Wise to establish a reliable text of the the lives, works and correspondence of the entire family were, I suppose, the next major event in Brontë studies. They culminated in the 21-volume Shakespeare Head edition (1931-38).

Thomas J. Wise et al., ed.: The Shakespeare Head Brontë (1931-38)

This includes four volumes of The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendship and Correspondence; two volumes of the Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë, three volumes of poetry - Poems of Emily and Anne Brontë, Poems of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë, and Gondal Poems - as well as 11 volumes of novels and another of bibliography.

Given Wise's subsequent fall from grace, it's a bit distressing that this remains the best and most convenient edition of the family's complex and serried works: though the Oxford English Texts series has gradually superseded most of its component parts.

Winifred Gérin: Brontë Biographies (1959-71)

The next major player in the saga was the redoubtable Winifred Gérin (1901-1981), who wrote successive biographies of the entire Brontë family and their biographer over a period of twenty-odd years:

Anne Brontë (1959)
Branwell Brontë (1961)
Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius (1967)
Emily Brontë: A Biography (1971)
The Brontës (1973)
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Biography (1976)

Gérin's second husband, John Lock, another Brontë enthusiast, was the co-author, with Canon W. T. Dixon, of A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters, and Times of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, 1777-1861 (1965), thus completing the tally.

Gérin, who lived in Haworth for many years, and regarded this as an essential foundation for insight into their works, approached the sisters with a blend of sympathy and indefatigable research into the physical context of their lives. She also, it must be said, provided a great deal of information about them which had not been available before. One reviewer of her prize-winning biography of Charlotte did, however, criticise it for lacking "the Yorkshire pith and terseness of the Brontë style."

Juliet Barker: The Brontës (1994)

Certainly that's the attitude taken by the sisters' next major biographer, Juliet Barker. She attempts to dispel the myths which have grown up around the family with a mixture of hard-headed scepticism and minute attention to detail. Emily, in particular, gets a bit of a caning in her account of the hotbed of genius that was the Brontë household.

Helen Burrow: Juliet Barker (1958- )

So who should we believe? Mrs. Gaskell, who had the advantage of actually meeting and befriending Charlotte shortly before her death? Winifred Gérin, who clearly filled some inner need in herself by living on the Haworth moors with her imaginary friends, the sisters and their circle? Or Juliet Barker, whose undisguised scorn for her (allegedly) more credulous predecessors makes one wonder at times just who appointed her chief custodian of their posthumous reputations?

Juliet Barker: The Brontës: A Life in Letters (1997 / 2016)

The literary donnybrook continues, as such things tend to do. If you'd like a good summary of its various twists and turns, I recommend Lucasta Miller's rather mordant analysis of the whole saga, The Brontë Myth.

Lucasta Miller: The Brontë Myth (2001)

In the meantime, though, we have six fascinating novels to read (and reread) by the three sisters - at least two of them, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, undoubted masterpieces. We also have a substantial number of poems by Emily: enough to guarantee her place among the English poets.

We also - as I discussed in an earlier post - have the ongoing revelation of the sheer extent and variety of the Brontës' surviving juvenilia. The various overlapping editions of that have now begun to rival editions of their own mature works.

Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829-1835, ed. Juliet Barker (1996)

•

Patrick Branwell Brontë: The Brontë Sisters (c.1834)

The Brontës
(1815-1855)

1. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)
2. Branwell Brontë (1817-1848)
3. Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
4. Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
5. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

[titles I own are marked in bold]:

•

George Richmond: Charlotte Brontë (1850)

Charlotte Brontë
(1816-1855)

Juvenilia:


1. Stories & Poems (c.1830-1839)
   
   
   1. The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 – 3 (August 1830)
   2. A Book of Ryhmes (1829)
   3. The Spell
   4. The Secret
   5. Lily Hart
   6. The Foundling
   7. The History of the Year
      • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   8. A Romantic Tale
      • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   9. Characters of Celebrated Men
      • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   10. Albion and Marina
       • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   11. The Bridal
       • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   12. Tales of the Islanders
   13. Tales of Angria (1838–1839)
       • Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   14. Passing Events
       • Included in: Five Novelettes. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
   15. Julia
       • Included in: Five Novelettes. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
   16. Mina Laury
       • Included in: Five Novelettes. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
       • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   17. Stancliffe's Hotel
       • Stancliffe's Hotel. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   18. The Duke of Zamorna
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   19. Henry Hastings
       • Included in: Five Novelettes. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   20. Caroline Vernon
       • Included in: Five Novelettes. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   21. The Roe Head Journal Fragments
       • Included in: Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.
   22. Something about Arthur
       • Something about Arthur. Ed. Christine Alexander. The University of Texas at Austin: Humanities Research Center, 1981.
   23. My Angria and the Angrians
       • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   24. Farewell to Angria
       • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
   25. [as Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley] The Green Dwarf, A Tale of the Perfect Tense (1833)
   
   
2. The Professor; Tales from Angria ['The History of the Year' / 'A Romantic Tale' / 'Characters of Celebrated Men' / 'Albion and Marina' / 'The Bridal' / 'My Angria and the Angrians' / 'Mina Laury' / 'Farewell to Angria']; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
3. Five Novelettes: Passing Events; Julia; Mina Laury; Henry Hastings; Caroline Vernon. Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Edited by Winifred Gérin. London: The Folio Press, 1971.
4. Something about Arthur. Transcribed from the Original Manuscript and Edited by Christine Alexander. The University of Texas at Austin: Humanities Research Center, 1981.
5. The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Ed. Frances Beer. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
6. Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987-91.
   • Volume I: The Glass Town Saga, 1826-1832 (1987)
   • Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 1: 1833-1834 (1991)
   • Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 2: 1834-1835 (1991)
7. Juvenilia 1829-1835. Ed. Juliet Barker. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
8. Stancliffe's Hotel. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.
9. Tales of Angria: Mina Laury; Stancliffe's Hotel; The Duke of Zamorna; Henry Hastings; Caroline Vernon; The Roe Head Journal Fragments. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.

Novels:


10. [as 'Currer Bell'] Jane Eyre (1847)
    • Jane Eyre. 1847. Introduction by Margaret Lane. Everyman’s Library, 287. 1908. London: J. M. Dent & Sons / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1953.
    • Jane Eyre. 1847. Introduction by Bonamy Dobrée. 1953. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1977.
11. [as 'Currer Bell'] Shirley (1849)
    • Shirley. 1849. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1953. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1977.
12. [as 'Currer Bell'] Villette (1853)
    • Villette. 1853. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1953. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1975.
13. The Professor (1857)
    • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
14. Emma: A Fragment (1860)
    • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.

Poetry:


15. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
    • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
16. Shorter, Clement, ed. The Complete Poems of Charlotte Brontë, Now for the First Time Collected, with Bibliography and Notes, by C. W. Hatfield. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1923.

Secondary:


17. Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. 1857. Ed. Alan Shelston. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
18. Gérin, Winifred. Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. 1967. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

•



19. Jane Eyre, dir. Cary Fukunaga, writ. Moira Buffini (based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë) – with Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender – (USA, 2011).

[There are, of course, many adaptations of Jane Eyre. This is definitely one of the better ones, though possibly the most interesting of all is Val Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie (1943).]

Cary Fukunaga, dir.: Jane Eyre (2011)

•

Branwell Brontë: Self-portrait (c.1840)

Patrick Branwell Brontë
(1817-1848)

Juvenilia:


1. Stories & Poems (c.1830-1839)
   
   
   1. Battell Book
   2. The Glass Town
   3. The Young Men's Magazine, Number 1 – 3 (August 1830)
   4. The Revenge A Tradgedy
   5. The History of the Young Men from Their First Settlement to the Present Time (1829–1831)
   6. The Fate of Regina
   7. The Liar Detected
   8. Ode on the Celebration of the Great African Games
   9. The Pirate A Tale
   10. Real Life in Verdopolis, volume 1–2
   11. The Politics of Verdopolis
   12. An Angrain Battle Song
   13. Percy's Musings upon the Battle of Edwardston
   14. Mary's Prayer
   15. An Historical Narrative of the War of Encroachment
   16. An Historical Narrative of the War of Agression
   17. Angria and the Angrians
   18. Letters from an Englishman (1830–1832)
   19. Life of Warner Howard Warner
   20. Tales of Angria (1838–1839)
       • Tales of Angria. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2006.

Poetry:


2. Winnifrith, Tom, ed. The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë: A New Annotated and Enlarged Edition of the Shakespeare Head Brontë. The Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited, 1983.

Works:


3. The Works of Patrick Branwell Brontë. Ed. Victor A. Neufeldt. 3 vols. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997-1999.

Secondary:


4. du Maurier, Daphne. The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë. 1960. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
5. Gérin, Winifred. Branwell Brontë: A Biography. 1961. A Radius Book. London: Hutchinson & Co (Publishers ) Ltd., 1972.

•



6. Wainwright, Sally. To Walk Invisible (BBC, 2016)

[A number of actors have now had the dubious distinction of playing poor Branwell Brontë, among them Michael Kitchen in The Brontës of Haworth (1973), Adam Nagaitis in To Walk Invisible (2016), and now, in Emily (2022), Fionn Whitehead.]

To Walk Invisible: Adam Nagaitis as Branwell Brontë (2016)

•

Branwell Brontë: Emily Brontë (c.1843)

Emily Jane Brontë
(1818-1848)

Novels:


1. [as 'Ellis Bell'] Wuthering Heights: A Novel (1847)
   • Wuthering Heights. 1847. Introduction by Bonamy Dobrée. 1953. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1977.
   • Wuthering Heights. An Authoritative Text, with Essays in Criticism. 1847. Ed. William M. Sale, Jr. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963.

Poetry:


2. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
   • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.
3. Shorter, Clement, ed. The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë, Arranged and Collated, with Bibliography and Notes, by C. W. Hatfield. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1923.
4. Emily Jane Brontë: The Complete Poems. Ed. C. W. Hatfield. 1941. New York & London: Columbia University Press & Oxford University Press, 1963.
5. The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë. Ed. Philip Henderson. London: The Folio Society, 1951.
6. Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse by Emily Brontë. Ed. Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford. Austin: University of Texas Press / London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Limited, 1955.
7. The Complete Poems. Ed. Janet Gezari. Penguin English Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.

Secondary:


8. Gérin, Winifred. Emily Brontë: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

•



9. Wuthering Heights, dir. & writ. Elisaveta Abrahall (based on the novel by Emily Brontë) – with Paul Eryk Atlas & Sha'ori Morris – (UK, 2018).

[There's a huge number of film adaptations of Wuthering Heights. Wikipedia lists at least 13, though it misses the one pictured below. Probably the most memorable remains William Wyler's 1939 movie, with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Despite its obvious lacunae, it's attained an almost mythic status among cinéastes.]

Elisaveta Abrahall, dir.: Wuthering Heights (2018)

•

Charlotte Brontë: Anne Brontë (c.1834)

Anne Brontë
(1820-1849)

Novels:


1. [as 'Acton Bell'] Agnes Grey (1847)
   • Included in: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall & Agnes Grey. 1848 & 1847. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1977.
2. [as 'Acton Bell'] The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
   • Included in: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall & Agnes Grey. 1848 & 1847. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1977.

Poetry:


3. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
   • Included in: The Professor; Tales from Angria; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954. Collins Gift Classics. London: Collins, 1976.

Secondary:


4. Gérin, Winifred. Anne Brontë. London: Thomas Nelson, 1959.

•



5. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, dir. Mike Barker, writ. David Nokes & Janet Barron (based on the novel by Anne Brontë) – with Toby Stephens, Tara Fitzgerald, Rupert Graves – (UK, 1996).

[There are at least two television adaptations of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the one pictured below and a 1968 version as well. It's also been adapted for the stage on a number of occasions.]

Mike Barker, dir.: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996)

•

The Brontës (Collins Gift Classics slipcase set) (1982-86)

Anthologies & Secondary Literature

1. The Works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Illustrations by A. S. Greig. Ornaments by T. C. Tilney. 12 vols. 1893. London: J. M. Dent, 1895-96.
   1. Jane Eyre, by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë). Vol. 1 of 2. Introduction by F. J. S. (1896)
   2. Jane Eyre. Vol. 2 of 2 (1896)
   3. Shirley, by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë). Vol. 1 of 2. Introduction by F. J. S. (1896)
   4. Shirley. Vol. 2 of 2 (1896)
   5. [Villette, by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë). Vol. 1 of 2.]
   6. [Villette. Vol. 2 of 2.]
   7. The Professor, by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë). Introduction by F. J. S. 1893 (1895)
   8. Poems of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. With Cottage Poems by Patrick Brontë, Introduction by F. J. S. (1896)
   9. [Wuthering Heights, by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë). Vol. 1 of 2. Introduction by F. J. S.]
   10. Wuthering Heights. Vol. 2 of 2. Agnes Grey, by Acton Bell (Anne Brontë). Introduction by F. J. S. (1896)
   11. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Acton Bell (Anne Brontë). Vol. 1 of 2. Introduction by F. J. S. (1893)
   12. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Acton Bell (Anne Brontë). Vol. 2 of 2 (1893)


2. The Brontës. Collins Gift Classics. 1953-54. London: Collins, 1975-1977.
   1. Brontë, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall & Agnes Grey. 1848 & 1847. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1954 (1977)
   2. Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. Introduction by Bonamy Dobrée. 1953 (1977)
   3. Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. 1849. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1953 (1977)
   4. Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. 1853. Introduction by Phyllis Bentley. 1953 (1975)
   5. Brontë, Charlotte. The Professor; Tales from Angria ['The History of the Year' / 'A Romantic Tale' / 'Characters of Celebrated Men' / 'Albion and Marina' / 'The Bridal' / 'My Angria and the Angrians' / 'Mina Laury' / 'Farewell to Angria']; Emma: A Fragment / Together with a Selection of Poems by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Ed. Phyllis Bentley. 1954 (1976)
   6. Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847. Introduction by Bonamy Dobrée. 1953 (1977)


3. The Brontës. Selected Poems. Ed. Juliet R. V. Barker. Everyman. 1985. London: J. M. Dent / Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1993.


4. The Brontës. Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Writings. Ed. Christine Alexander. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

•



5. Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. 1994. A Phoenix Giant Paperback. London: Orion Books Ltd., 1995.
6. Barker, Juliet. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. London: Viking, 1997.
7. Barker, Juliet. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. 1997. Rev. ed. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2016.
8. Bentley, Phyllis. The Brontës and Their World. 1969. London: Thames & Hudson, 1974.
9. Clarke, Pauline. The Twelve and the Genii. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1962. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber, 1970.
10. Gérin, Winifred. The Brontës. London: Longmans, 1973.
11. Gérin, Winifred. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Biography. 1976. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
12. Miller, Lucasta. The Brontë Myth. London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.
13. Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth. The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.

•



14. The Brontës of Haworth: 4-part miniseries, dir. Marc Miller, writ. Christopher Fry – with Alfred Burke, Vickery Turner, Ann Penfold, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Michael Kitchen, Rosemary McHale – (UK, 1973). 2-DVD set.

[Despite having been made almost fifty years ago, The Brontës of Haworth remains a remarkably convincing version of the family story. A good deal of this has to be attributed to renowned British playwright Christopher Fry's superlative script. It's an exceptionally grim and depressing tale, mind you - and the series makes no attempt to disguise this. The recurring motif of the sisters walking and talking around the kitchen table until finally there's only Charlotte left is still quite haunting. Fry also does a good job of humanising the often overlooked Anne.]

The Brontës of Haworth (1973)

•

Emily Brontë: Keeper - from life (1838)

Juvenilia

Charlotte Brontë: The Young Men’s Magazine (1830)

I remember when I used to buy those fat old volumes of the works of some poet or other, they would almost invariably include a section at the front entitled 'Juvenilia.'

Kindlier editors would relegate this to the appendices, so that it didn't constitute one's first introduction to - say - Wordsworth or Tennyson, but those obedient to the remorseless dictates of chronology would place those sorry scraps of verse right there, front and centre, the first thing the eye was likely to light upon.

There's a passage in W. H. Auden's long narrative poem 'Letter to Lord Byron' where he imagines his own fate in the next world:

You know the terror that for poets lurks
Beyond the ferry when to Minos brought.
Poets must utter their Collected Works,
Including Juvenilia. So I thought
That you might warn him. Yes, I think you ought,
In case, when my turn comes, he shall cry ‘Atta boys,
Off with his bags, he’s crazy as a hatter, boys!’

Now was the fear an entirely idle one in his case. The remorseless hand of Katherine Bucknell, editor of this and many other volumes of literary remains by the poet and his great friend Christopher Isherwood, has not allowed even this sacred turf to remain untrodden:

W. H. Auden: Juvenilia (1994)

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. London: Faber, 1994.

Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928. Expanded Paperback Edition. Ed. Katherine Bucknell. 1994. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.

It's true that some of Auden's early verse is very good - excellent imitations of Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, for the most part - but none of it quite reaches the level of the poems included in his first, 1928, chapbook, let alone the Faber-published Poems (1930).

C. S. & W. H. Lewis: Boxen (2008)

Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis. Ed. Walter Hooper. London: Collins & Fount Paperbacks, 1985.

Boxen: Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia. Essay by Walter Hooper. 1985. Introduced by Douglas Gresham. 2008. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

You have to be pretty high up the index of salability (as well as critical reputation) to merit publication of your juvenilia, it should be said. Another recent instance is C. S. Lewis, whose childish 'beast fable' world of Boxen first saw print in 1985, and then again - in a greatly expanded edition - in 2008.

Those who were hoping for something prophetic of the Narnia books were in for a bit of a disappointment, but so great is the interest in him that both books appear to have sold quite well to Lewis 'completists' (such as myself).

Jane Austen: Juvenilia

The Works of Jane Austen. Vol. 6: Minor Works. Now First Collected and Edited from the Manuscripts. With Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Ed. R. W. Chapman. The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen. 6 vols. 1954. 2nd ed. 1958. 3rd ed. Rev. B. C. Southam. 1969. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

A rather better known example is (of course) Jane Austen, whose juvenilia first appeared in print in the early twentieth century, and was added by R. W. Chapman as an extra to his classic five-volume edition of her novels in 1954.

Jane Austen: Minor Works (1958)

I suppose the essence of a really impressive body of juvenilia is that it needs to be created in partnership with a sibling or other collaborator. That was the case with C. S. Lewis and his older brother Warnie, as well as Jane Austen and her older sister Cassandra, illustrator of the classic "History of England … By a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian."

Frances Beer, ed.: The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë (1986)

Beer, Frances, ed. The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.

Of course there's no question who are the most famous family of juvenilia writers of all time - and I don't mean Daisy Ashford and her sisters, for all the undoubted charm of The Young Visiters and its successors.

Daisy Ashford: The Young Visiters (1919)

I refer, of course, to the Brontës: Anne, Branwell, Charlotte, and Emily. The story goes that their father Patrick came home one day in 1826 with twelve wooden soldiers, which he meant to be a birthday present for Branwell, who was about to turn nine. His older sister Charlotte (10), and the two younger girls Emily (7) and Anne (6) each chose a particular soldier as their own, and began to elaborate a complex game around these "Young Men" (as they called them):

However, it was not until December 1827 that their ideas took written form, and the imaginary African kingdom of Glass Town came into existence, followed by the Empire of Angria. Emily and Anne created Gondal, an island continent in the North Pacific, ruled by a woman, after the departure of Charlotte in 1831. In the beginning, these stories were written in little books, the size of a matchbox (about 1.5 x 2.5 inches—3.8 x 6.4 cm), and cursorily bound with thread. The pages were filled with close, minute writing, often in capital letters without punctuation and embellished with illustrations, detailed maps, schemes, landscapes, and plans of buildings, created by the children according to their specialisations. The idea was that the books were of a size for the soldiers to read. The complexity of the stories matured as the children's imaginations developed, fed by reading the three weekly or monthly magazines to which their father had subscribed.

- Wikipedia

Fannie Ratchford: The Brontës’ Web of Childhood (1941)

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth. The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.

Ratchford, Fannie Elizabeth, ed. Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse by Emily Brontë. Austin: University of Texas Press / London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Limited, 1955.

The classic account of all this is Fannie Ratchford's The Brontës’ Web of Childhood. She followed this up with a rather more controversial rearrangement of Emily Brontë's Gondal poems, which she saw as a connected series of lyric moments which could be linked into a 'verse novel' about a single protagonist, 'A. G. A.' - Queen Augusta Geraldine Almeda.

Pauline Clark: The Twelve and the Genii (1962)

Clarke, Pauline. The Twelve and the Genii. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1962. Faber Paper Covered Editions. London: Faber, 1970.

An even more imaginative response to their imaginary world can be found in Pauline Clarke's 1962 children's book, which concerns the further adventures of the twelve toy soldiers immortalised in the Brontë children's - the 'Genii' of the title - tales of Glass-town, Gondal and Angria.

The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence. 1936-38 (1980)

Wise, Thomas J., & John Alexander Symington, ed. The Shakespeare Head Brontë: The Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings of Charlotte and Patrick Branwell Brontë. 2 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936.

Actually reading the stories themselves is not so simple as it might appear. For a long time the most complete edition available was that produced by celebrated literary forger and thief Thomas J. Wise, in collaboration with John Alexander Symington, in 1936.

However, given that he:

privately printed abridged and inaccurate editions of ... [the] manuscripts; he removed the original covers from a number of the booklets and had them rebound for his own personal library; and others he took apart page by page, selling the fragments to friends and acquaintances.

- The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës, ed. Heather Glen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 37

that's not really saying very much.

Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (3 vols, 1987-91)

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume I: The Glass Town Saga, 1826-1832. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 1: 1833-1834. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Alexander, Christine, ed. An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Volume II: The Rise of Angria, 1833-1835. Part 2: 1834-1835. 3 vols. Shakespeare Head Press. Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Light began to dawn on this unsatisfactory situation in 1987, when New Zealand-born Academic Christine Alexander started to publish her magisterial, 3-volume edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë.

I recently purchased all three of these books from Browsers Bookshop in Hamilton. Somewhat poignantly, it turned out to be a gift set presented by the editor to her old school, Woodford House. Judging from the library slip at the back, it had only ever been borrowed once, so I suppose it made sense to de-accession it. Anyway, their loss is my gain.

Christine Alexander, ed.: The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (1987-91))
[photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The fact that it proclaimed itself to be a three-volume edition and it was three volumes I bought led me, mistakenly, to think that it was complete. Not so, I'm afraid. Volume II, The Rise of Angria (1991), is divided into two separate parts.

So where's volume III? Nowhere, it would appear. For some reason the edition was interrupted mid-course, and we're still awaiting its completion thirty years later.

24-7 Press Release: Prof. Christine Alexander (2014)

Not that time has exactly stood still in the meantime. There's been one more attempt, by Brontë scholar Juliet Barker, to provide a representative selection of Charlotte Brontë's part of the juvenilia, as well as a strange little stand-alone publication of the late play 'Stancliffe's Hotel.'

Juliet Barker, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829-1835 (1996)

Charlotte Brontë. Juvenilia 1829-1835. Ed. Juliet Barker. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.

Charlotte Brontë. Stancliffe's Hotel. 1837-39. Ed. Heather Glen. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.

Heather Glen, ed.: Charlotte Brontë: Stancliffe's Hotel (2003)

What can one say about all this? I suppose that the principal interest we take in the juvenilia of subsequently celebrated writer is for the echoes they presumbaly contain of their later, more accomplished works.

And yet they can have a strange charm in themselves. The Scottish writer Marjorie Fleming (1803-1811) wrote a diary in the late eighteen months of her brief life which contains such flashes of charm and wit that it's hard to put down even now.

Miss Isa Keith: Marjorie Fleming (1811)

The Complete Marjory Fleming: Her Journals, Letters & Verse. Ed. Frank Sidgwick. 1934. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935.

I'm not sure that the same can be said of Opal Whiteley's very odd diary, which was all the rage in the roaring twenties, but seems now to have been some kind of an odd hoax.

Opal Whiteley (1897-1992)

The Diary of Opal Whiteley. Introduction by Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Preface by Ellery Sedgwick. 1920. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920.

E. S. Bradburne. Opal Whiteley: The Unsolved Mystery. Together with Opal Whiteley's Diary: 'The Journal of an Understanding Heart'. London: Putnam & Company Limited, 1962.

•

Anne & Jack Ross: Kwalic Archive (c.1970-1975)

I have to add, as a postscript to this post, some links to the Mosehouse Studio posts Bronwyn Lloyd has devoted to the childhood writings and drawings of my own family - mostly to do with our toy Koala bears, inhabitants of the city of Kwalalumpa, mapped and genealogised with almost Brontë-like zeal by my sister Anne and myself.

• The Kwalic Archive (Part One) [4/11/2008]
• The Kwalic Archive (Part Two) [17/11/2008]
• Old School [3/11/2011]
• Identity Parade [4/8/2013]

Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991)