Tim Powers (2): My Brother's Keeper

Tim Powers: My Brother's Keeper (2023)

It's roughly ten years since I wrote a post about American fantasy novelist Tim Powers. I did make a further brief mention of him in a piece on psychogeography a few years ago, but nothing much since. Am I my brother's keeper, after all?

Tim Powers: Alternate Routes. Vickery & Castine #1 (2018)

He's not been idle in that time: that's putting it mildly. Anyone would think he was doing it for a living! He's published a trilogy of books (with, apparently, a fourth yet to come) about a couple of Mulder and Scully-like investigators - Vickery and Castine - and their explorations of the Los Angeles motorway system and other haunted sites around the city.

Tim Powers: Forced Perspectives. Vickery & Castine #2 (2020)

"The Ghosts of the Freeway are rising," as the cover of the first of them proclaims.

Tim Powers: Stolen Skies. Vickery & Castine #3 (2022)

He's also put out a substantial collection of his short stories and novellas to date: Down and Out in Purgatory. As you can see from the listings at the bottom of this post, it's not complete, but still a pretty comprehensive selection of his work in these forms over the years.

Tim Powers: Down and Out in Purgatory (2017)

The main event in these years, however, would have to be his new novel about the Brontës, My Brother's Keeper.

Tim Powers: My Brother's Keeper (2023)

•

Tim Powers: The Stress of Her Regard (1989)

Set - more or less - in the same magical universe as his earlier books The Stress of Her Regard and Hide Me Among the Graves, My Brother's Keeper continues the conceit of an underlying occult explanation for the odd behaviour of various constellations of closely related Romantic poets and artists: the Shelley circle in The Stress of Her Regard, the Pre-Raphaelites in Hide Me Among the Graves, and now the three visionary sisters of Haworth Parsonage ...

Tim Powers: Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)

Perhaps Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their hapless brother Branwell are not quite so well known among fantasy readers as they are to fans of Victorian fiction, however, given the bold legend:

Howarth.
Yorkshire.
1846

on the back of my paperbook copy of the book. I suppose "Haworth" might well look like a misprint for "Howarth" if you hadn't been brought up on the arcane lore of the Brontës.

Frances O'Connor, dir.: Emily (2022)

I wrote an earlier post about about what sceptical historian Lucasta Miller called "The Brontë Myth" à propos of Frances O'Connor's 2022 film Emily.

Emily, the fiercest and most enigmatic of the three sisters, is at the heart of Tim Powers' novel, too, and the similarities between the two projects are quite revealing. Both O'Connor and Powers gift Emily with an illicit love affair: O'Connor with timid young curate William Weightman, Powers with surly (albeit reformed) werewolf Alcuin Curzon.

Both authors are at a bit of a loss at how to deal with Emily's elder sister Charlotte, so O'Connor turns her into a tedious, uncreative nag, while Powers makes her the only one of the Brontë children not to make a childish pact with the powers of darkness by smearing their blood on a rock in a nearby cavern.

Both take considerable liberties with the well-documented realities of the Brontë's lives, but in O'Connor's case this involves rewriting history to a startling degree, whereas Powers sticks to his usual artistic principle of feeling free to invent reams of extra supernatural action just as long as he's governed by the actual canonical timeline of his subjects' lives.

Branwell Brontë: Anne, Emily & Charlotte Brontë (1834)

I guess it's a matter of taste, but I myself found O'Connor's inventions more intrusive because they had the cumulative effect of somehow normalising the oddities of Emily's personality. As I said in my previous post:

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 ... She's the only one of the three sisters who's ever been regarded as a poet of distinction, and the ... clockwork machinery of her sublime Gothic novel belies any attempts that have been made since to write it off as hysterical melodrama.

However, "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 don't see what it adds to our sense of Emily's deep strangeness as a human being to invent a lot of belittling lies about the other sisters.

As Carrie S. remarks in her enthusiastic review of Tim Powers' phantasmagorical reinvention of the Brontë saga:

I love my Brontës and I get so annoyed when either adaptations of their work or stories based on their lives get EVERYTHING WRONG ... My Brother’s Keeper is an eerie story involving the Brontë family, werewolves, and warring cults, and, darn it, it gets everything just absolutely perfect.

- Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (6/3/2024)

She goes on to quote a comment by fantasy illustrator Michael Hague to the effect that "the more outlandish the the things he wanted to represent, the more convincingly realistic the mundane details must be":

The story works because, first of all, the mundane details feel correct. Things that ought to be heavy do, in fact, cause the characters difficulty when they try to lift them. People have to eat and drink and sleep. Much mention is made of potatoes, either eating them or peeling them or cutting them up. Struggles are as much mundane as mystical. For instance, the characters make frequent references to their efforts to convince local government to move the town’s well uphill from the cemetery –- a real-life problem for the residents of Haworth ... was that the cemetery drained directly into their drinking water.
Secondly, the story works because, to me, the portrait of the Brontës, specifically Patrick, Branwell, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, their housekeeper Tabitha and Emily’s dog Keeper, is spot on. Everything they do and everything they say is perfectly in character. As bizarre as the plot is, it actually makes aspects of the Brontës’ lives make more sense rather than less.

The plot is definitely as busy and complicated as in any of Powers' other novels, but it somehow feels more weighty and serious this time. It was a little difficult to credit that he actually believed in the existence of his Dr. Polidori vampire (in Hide Me Among the Graves) or his stone-disease cursed poet Percy Shelley (in The Stress of Her Regard).

Branwell Brontë: Emily Brontë (1833)

I don't feel the slightest doubt that he's fallen in love with his own fearless Emily Brontë, though. As she strides across the moors, shooting at lycanthropes and guarding her worthless brother Branwell from the consequences of yet another betrayal, she gradually assumes the larger-than-life status which her admirers (myself among them) have accorded her all along.

If there could ever be such a thing as a human being whose ethical judgement and moral courage is definitively beyond question (for us true believers, at least) it's Emily Brontë - and Powers sets out to substantiate this view. Anne comes out pretty well, too - far better than in the O'Connor film. Admirers of Charlotte will probably be a little disappointed, but there's a good deal of Jane Eyre in Powers' story, too, so they won't feel as disgusted as they did by the lies and calumnies included in in the Emily film.

Emily Brontë: Keeper (1838)

Nor is it the smallest virtue of Powers' book that Emily's faithful dog has such a big part to play in the story. As Carrie S. succinctly expresses it:

He is a Very Good Dog.

Overall, I'd say that My Brother's Keeper is Powers' best book since his defining fantasy novel The Anubis Gates some forty years ago. And given that this one made me cry - though Emily's death tends to do that to me, even in O'Connor's film - I think that it's very probably better.

Chapeau bas, messieurs! as old Doctor Rieux in Camus' La Peste dreams that his readers may someday say when they read the opening sentence of his own novel: "Hats off, boys!"

Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates (1985)

•

Emily Brontë: The Annotated Wuthering Heights (2014)

Another surprisingly difficult feat which Powers pulls off with style and panache is weaving so many vital details from Wuthering Heights into the even wilder action of My Brother's Keeper.

"Heathcliff's lost years" is the approach many writers have taken to the problem of how to continue - or supplement - the storyline of Emily's masterpiece. Powers takes the opposite tack. He makes the character Heathcliff a dim avatar of the actual demon "Welsh", who has haunted the Brunty family (renamed Brontë, accordingly to Powers, not by analogy with Admiral Nelson's title as Duke of Bronte, a commune in Sicily, but as an invocation of Brontes, one of the three Cyclopes who forged Zeus's thunderbolt) for three generations.

I won't go into all the ins-and-outs of the foreshadowings and connections Powers manages to excavate from Emily's plot, but suffice it to say that a rereading of Wuthering Heights, perhaps in Janet Gezari's 2014 annotated edition, might help to appreciate that aspect of his work.

For the rest, I'm a little surprised to see that Powers has managed to produce yet another novel since My Brother's Keeper, set - this time - among the American expatriates in 1920s Paris. I suppose when you're on a roll it pays to keep going. In any case, I look forward to reading what mayhem he's managed to wreak amongst Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and the other Moderns:

Tim Powers: The Mills of the Gods (2025)

•

Tim Powers (2013)

Timothy Thomas Powers
(1952- )

Novels:


1. The Skies Discrowned [aka Forsake the Sky, 1986] (1976)
   • Included in: Powers of Two: The Skies Discrowned & An Epitaph in Rust. 1976, 1986, 1989. Framingham, MA: The NESFA Press, 2004.
2. An Epitaph in Rust (1976)
   • Included in: Powers of Two: The Skies Discrowned & An Epitaph in Rust. 1976, 1986, 1989. Framingham, MA: The NESFA Press, 2004.
3. The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
   • The Drawing of the Dark. 1979. London: Granada, 1981.
4. The Anubis Gates (1983)
   • The Anubis Gates. 1983. London: Triad Grafton Books, 1986.
5. Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1985)
   • Dinner at Deviant's Palace. 1985. London: Grafton Books, 1987.
6. On Stranger Tides (1987)
   • On Stranger Tides. 1987. New York: Ace Books, 1988.
Polidori series:

The Stress of Her Regard (1989)

• The Stress of Her Regard. 1989. London: HarperCollins, 1991.

Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)

• Hide Me Among the Graves. 2012. Corvus. London: Atlantic Books Ltd., 2013.

Fault Lines series:

Last Call (1992)

• Last Call. Fault Lines, 1. 1993. New York: Avon Books, 1996.

Expiration Date (1995)

• Expiration Date. Fault Lines, 2. London: HarperCollins, 1995.

Earthquake Weather (1997)

• Earthquake Weather. Fault Lines, 3. 1997. London: Orbit, 1998.

7. Declare (2001)
   • Declare. 2001. New York: HarperTorch, 2002.
8. Three Days to Never (2006)
   • Three Days to Never. 2006. William Morrow. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.
9. Medusa's Web (2015)
   • Medusa's Web. 2015. Corvus. London: Atlantic Books Ltd., 2016.
Vickery and Castine series:

Alternate Routes (2018)

• Alternate Routes. Vickery & Castine, 1. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2018. [Uncorrected Proof Copy]

Forced Perspectives (2020)

• Forced Perspectives. Vickery & Castine, 2. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2020.

Stolen Skies (2022)

• Stolen Skies. Vickery & Castine, 3. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2022.

10. My Brother's Keeper (2023)
    • My Brother's Keeper. 2023. Head of Zeus. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2024.
11. The Mills of the Gods (2025)

Short Story Collections:


12. Night Moves and Other Stories (2000)
    1. Itinerary (1999)
    2. Night Moves (1986)
    3. Pat Moore (2004)
    4. The Way Down the Hill (1982)
    5. Where They Are Hid (1995)
    6. [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
    7. [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
13. [with James P. Blaylock] The Devils in the Details (2003)
    1. Introduction (Tim Powers)
    2. Through and Through (Tim Powers)
    3. Devil in the Details (James P. Blaylock)
    4. Fifty Cents (James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers)
    5. Mexican Food: An Afterword (James P. Blaylock)
14. Strange Itineraries (2005)
    1. Itinerary (1999)
    2. The Way Down the Hill (1982)
    3. Pat Moore (2004)
    4. [with James P. Blaylock] Fifty Cents (2003)
    5. Through and Through (2003)
    6. [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
    7. Where They Are Hid (1995)
    8. [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
    9. Night Moves (1986)
    • Strange Itineraries: The Complete Short Stories of Tim Powers. Introduction by Paul Di Filippo. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2005.
15. The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (2011)
    1. The Bible Repairman (2006)
    2. A Soul in a Bottle (2006)
    3. The Hour of Babel (2008)
    4. Parallel Lines (2010)
    5. A Journey of Only Two Paces (2011)
    6. A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
    • The Bible Repairman and Other Stories. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2011.
16. Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
    1. Salvage and Demolition (2013)
    2. The Bible Repairman (2006)
    3. Appointment at Sunset (2014)
    4. [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
    5. Pat Moore (2004)
    6. The Way Down the Hill (1982)
    7. Itinerary (1999)
    8. A Journey of Only Two Paces (2011)
    9. The Hour of Babel (2008)
    10. Where They Are Hid (1995)
    11. [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
    12. Through and Through (2003)
    13. Night Moves (1986)
    14. A Soul in a Bottle (2006)
    15. Parallel Lines (2010)
    16. [with James P. Blaylock] Fifty Cents (2003)
    17. Nobody's Home: An Anubis Gates Story (2014)
    18. A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
    19. Down and Out in Purgatory (2016)
    20. Sufficient Unto the Day (2017)
    • Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers. Foreword by David Drake. Introduction by Tony Daniel. 2017. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2019.

Chapbooks:


17. Night Moves [novella] (1986)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
18. [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] The Complete Twelve Hours of the Night (1986)
19. [by Phil Garland] A Short Poem by William Ashbless (1987)
20. Where They Are Hid [novella] (1995)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
21. [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] On Pirates (2001)
22. [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook (2002)
23. The Bible Repairman [novella] (2006)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
24. Nine Sonnets by Francis Thomas Marrity (2006)
25. A Soul in a Bottle [novella] (2006)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
26. Three Sonnets by Cheyenne Fleming (2007)
27. A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
28. 'Death of a Citizen.' In A Comprehensive Dual Bibliography of James P. Blaylock & Tim Powers, by Silver Smith (2012)
29. Salvage and Demolition [novella] (2013)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
30. Nobody's Home [novella] (2014)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
31. Appointment on Sunset [novella] (2014)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
32. Down and Out in Purgatory [novella] (2016)
    • Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
33. More Walls Broken [novella] (2019)
34. The Properties of Rooftop Air [novella] (2020)
35. After Many a Summer [novella] (2023)

Secondary:


36. [Katz, Brad. “An Interview with Tim Powers (21/2/96).” Brow Magazine (1996).]

•

Tim Powers: The Last Call Series (1992-1997)

Tim Powers: The Vickery & Castine Series (2018-2022)

Pierre Mornet: The Brontës’ Secret (2016)

•

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)

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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)

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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)