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)

28 Days Haunted & Other Spooky TV Shows

28 Days Haunted (2022)

Don't get me wrong. I hugely enjoyed The Conjuring (2013) - and its 2016 sequel, based on the famous Enfield poltergeist case in London in the late 1970s.

The sympathetic portrayal of self-described demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren in both movies was, admittedly, a little troubling, but then the same could be said of many Hollywood films. If they weren't, in real life, quite the sweethearts portrayed by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, then surely some dramatic licence must be conceded.

The Conjuring Series

Recently, however, Bronwyn and I have been watching the Netflix Reality TV Series 28 Days Haunted, which accords the Warrens almost folk-hero status as occult visionaries. The show purports to be a rigorous test of their theory that there's a period of 28 days (based on lunar cycles, perhaps?) which is necessary to 'break through' in any investigation of a haunting.

Sydney Morning Herald: Ed & Lorraine Warren

Needless to say, the theory passes the test with flying colours, and succeeds, too, in providing viewers such as ourselves with riveting footage of husky Americans with video cameras running around corridors screaming their heads off.

Is this serious paranormal research? Well, of course not. Is it particularly entertaining? Shamefully, the answer would have to be yes.

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

It was the late lamented Shirley Jackson who first propounded the thesis that the most fascinating thing about haunted house investigations is the people who undertake them. The interaction between the various eccentric personalities on display far outweighs in interest any alleged 'findings' they may obtain.

The result, as you no doubt already know, was her classic novel The Haunting of Hill House (appallingly, shamefully, misadapted by clunkster extraordinaire Mike Flanagan in his travesty of a TV series of the same name).

Mike Flanagan: The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

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1 - Most Haunted (2002- )

Such is my fascination with the genre, that I've inveigled poor Bronwyn into suffering through a whole slew of True Ghost Stories on TV. Let's see, there was the long-running British show Most Haunted, hosted by Yvette Fielding - we watched a huge amount of that.

Derek Acorah, the resident psychic, was worth the price of entry on his own. I still remember him channelling 'Cloggie', the spirit haunting a ghost train ride in, I think, Brighton.

Convincing? Not very, but there was also much entertainment to be had from watching the host, Yvette, getting steadily more and more terrified as it got darker and darker. Seldom did she last in any 'haunted' room for more than a minute or two ...

2 - Knock Knock Ghost (2014- )

Canadian TV show Knock Knock Ghost is more of pisstake of such hand-held camera reality shows than a serious investigation of hauntings. It can be very amusing - if a trifle one-note - particularly the struggle of host Richard Ryder's assistant Brie Doyle to achieve some on-camera recognition for their endless travails.

3 - Ghost Hunt (2005-6)

Continuing our international coverage, Kiwi TV programme Ghost Hunt was a surprisingly successful attempt to showcase various local pyschic hotspots, including Larnach Castle in Dunedin, the Waitomo Caves Hotel, and the Kinder House in Parnell.

The show's basic methodology was to have two investigators, Carolyn Taylor and Michael Hallows, wandering around in the dark with head-mounted cameras, with a subsequent analysis (i.e. digital tweaking) of their footage by computer whiz Brad Hills. I loved it. I wish they'd made a lot more episodes.

4 - Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories (1991-95)

For convenience's sake, it seems best to sample some of the many American contributions to the genre in chronological order.

We'll start with Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories, which I used to watch on idle afternoons back in the 1990s. Hosted first by Leonard Nimoy, then Stacey Keach, and directed by Tobe Hooper, the stories were first restaged with actors. Interviews were then conducted with the actual victims.

A certain lack of verisimilitude was therefore inevitable. Some of the accounts were very interesting, though.

5 - Ghost Hunters (2004- )

Despite its longevity, and its status as a pioneer in the field, I'm afraid I've never been able to warm to Ghost Hunters. It's hard to see how the investigators can maintain their enthusiasm for each uneventful night in yet another banal setting. Their pop psychology explanations of the 'phenomena' they discover are similarly unexciting. It seems more like an ongoing pension plan for the participants than a legitimate, edge-of-your-seat reality series.

6 - Celebrity Ghost Stories (2008- )

I feel a bit ashamed at having watched so many of these Celebrity Ghost Stories. As I recall, the best one of all was provided by David Carradine, about his partner's ex's ghost, and his participation in their lives. Given that Carradine died shortly after filming it, it had a certain punch to it that the others tend to lack.

A few of the participants - C. Thomas Howell, I mean you - seem just to be taking the piss with obviously made-up tales designed to bolster up their flagging careers, but for the most part they're surprisingly convincing. I'd go so far as to say that one or two of them were genuinely disturbing.

7 - Paranormal Witness (2011- )

The sheer number of stories presented on Paranormal Witness over the years - albeit with 'reconstructions' of the principal events doubling with the victims' retellings of their experiences - have combined to give it a certain air of authenticity.

How could so many people bother to conspire to create such elaborate and circumstantial lies? It's far easier to believe in the basic sincerity of at least the vast majority of them.

Mind you, the easily deduced off-camera psychological effects of repressive parents, abusive spouses, and stressful living situations - as Stephen King once sagely observed, one thing people are really serious about is real estate: especially losing their equity in a hard-bought property - certainly offer possible alternative explanations for many of the events described.

But then that's another reason why this series' essential honesty makes it of genuine value to the aficionado.

8 - Haunted (2018- )

I never felt that the format the producers chose for Haunted worked very well. Friends and relatives of the people telling the story would sit in a circle around them, reacting to the events as they were recounted (and simultaneously reconstructed on screen for the benefit of viewers).

Unfortunately, this had a strangely stilted effect, and while it certainly sounds all right in theory, in practice the simiplicity of a talking head being interviewed directly about their experiences (as in Paranormal Witness, above) is far more effective.

We gave up on it after awhile, as the stories grew increasingly far-fetched. There was a Latin American spin-off which was rather more spirited, but still struggled to surmount this formatting issue.

9 - Paranormal Caught on Camera (2019- )

Paranormal Caught on Camera can be, at times, mind-numbingly tedious - in particular all the shots of blurry lights moving around in the sky. But it's worth sitting through all that for the truly bizarre things it occasionally presents.

Susan Slaughter (Paranormal Caught on Camera)

My own favourite among the various half-psychic investigator, half standup comic commentators they feature to contextualise each piece of grainy film would have to be the redoubtable Susan Slaughter. It doesn't matter what they show - strange scissor-people without bodies, shadow figures, were-creatures of various varieties - she's seen them all already: had lunch with them in some cases.

I see from her IMDb profile that as well as being a "paranormal expert, she openly identifies as a Witch ... Susan is well known for her duality in both acting and the paranormal." All power to her, imho.

10 - Unsolved Mysteries (2020- )

Unsolved Mysteries mostly specialises in missing-person cases and gruesome, unsolved murders. Every now and then they include an episode on more supernatural matters, however, including a truly wonderful piece, "Paranormal Rangers", on the Navaho Reservation policemen whose job it is to investigate any and all unexplained sightings in the immense stretch of territory under their jurisdiction.

11 - Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers (1985)

So, in conclusion, turning back to the UK, we come to the great-grandaddy of them all, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World (13 episodes, 1980), and its sequels Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers (13 episodes, 1985), and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World (26 episodes, 1994).

What can I say about this? It's clearly a masterpiece of the genre, though it could be argued that the longer it went on the less it stayed in tune with the sceptical reductionism of Clarke himself and more it was dominated by the wide-eyed credulity of the TV producers. But (as I explained in my previous blogpost on Clarke) that's of small concern to me.

It gave rise to a series of illustrated coffee-table books, as well as various sets of videos and DVDs (most of which I own):

Books:


1. John Fairley & Simon Welfare. Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World (London: Collins, 1980)
2. John Fairley & Simon Welfare. Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers (London: Collins, 1984)
3. John Fairley & Simon Welfare. Arthur C. Clarke’s Chronicles of the Strange & Mysterious (London: Guild Publishing, 1987)
4. John Fairley & Simon Welfare. Arthur C. Clarke’s A-Z of Mysteries: From Atlantis to Zombies. Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke (London: Book Club Associates, 1993)
5. Simon Welfare & John Fairley. Arthur C. Clarke's Mysteries (London: Collins, 1998)

DVDs:


6. Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, narrated by Gordon Honeycombe, prod. John Fanshawe & John Fairley, dir. Peter Jones, Michael Weigall & Charles Flynn (UK, 1980). 2-DVD set.
7. Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, narrated by Anna Ford, prod. John Fairley, dir. Peter Jones, Michael Weigall & Charles Flynn (UK, 1985). 2-DVD set.
8. Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, narrated by Carol Vorderman, prod. John Fairley, dir. Peter Jones, Michael Weigall & Charles Flynn (UK, 1994). 4-DVD set.

Not many of the episodes were specifically about ghosts, but those that were were models of the investigative genre: well-researched, well-constructed, and profoundly atmospheric. It's definitely worth watching again, if you ever have the good fortune to come across it.

Simon Welfare & John Fairley: Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World (1980)

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28 Days Haunted: The Control Room, with hosts Aaron Sagers & Tony Spera (2022)

So what are the principal hallmarks of the genre? Let's see:

• a complete lack of verifiable information or results
• deliberately poor picture and sound quality
• endless credulity in the face of flimsy conjectures
• constant reliance on weird and pointless - mostly electronic - gadgets
• frequent bombastic assertions of close knowledge of the Other Side and its ways

And yet, and yet, every now and then one gets the slightest glimmer that there might actually be something going on in some of the places these investigators get themselves into. It's that, I suppose, that keeps me watching.

To adopt a more (Shirley) Jacksonian perspective, however, even the most sceptical viewer would have to admit that some of the personalities on display in 28 Days Haunted really are quite priceless:

28 Days Haunted: Madison Dry Goods (Madison, North Carolina)
l-to-r: Brandy Miller & Jereme Leonard

Jereme [sic.] and Brandy, shut inside a Dry Goods store in Madison, North Carolina, were particularly good - he a loud, useless, fraidy-cat, who, despite his claims to be a 'Cajun Demonologist,' actually managed to get himself possessed by one of the entities; she a dedicated nag who could go on and on about the same topics for hours in an endless, terrifying loop (as the onscreen time-count recorded dispassionately).

The most frightening thing about their stay, however, was not so much the building they were trapped in as the weirdly deserted town surrounding it. Cars would occasionally pass, but not a single person could be seen on the streets or in the surrounding shops and offices. It might as well have been Innsmouth, Massachusetts, rather than Madison, North Carolina.

28 Days Haunted: Captain Grant’s Inn (Preston, Connecticut)
l-to-r: Nick Simons & Sean Austin

Then there were those three tomfools, Sean, Nick and Aaron, staying in Captain Grant’s Inn in Preston, Connecticut. Sean, the self-professed psychic was locked in a constant battle with sceptical technician Nick. The latter presumed to doubt the validity of a message written on a steamed-up mirror in the bathroom. The more Sean denied having written it himself, the guiltier he looked.

Aaron Thompson

Hapless would-be peacemaker Aaron felt increasingly overlooked and undervalued by the other two as the investigation progressed. In W. H. Auden's phrase, he sank into "a more terrible calm" as their seemingly interminable ordeal continued.

28 Days Haunted: Lumber Baron Inn (Denver, Colorado)
l-to-r: Ray Causey, Amy Parks, & Shane Pittman

Somewhat surprisingly, Shane, Ray and Amy, at the Lumber Baron Inn in Denver, Colorado, may qualify as the least harmonious group of all. The brutal way in which the two men conspired to bully psychic sensitive Amy into dangerous and uncomfortable situations had to be seen to be believed. She made it clear that she would not channel spirits through 'mirror-portals' (whatever those are). Her counter-offer of using candles to establish contact was accepted reluctantly by the thuggish pair.

That is, until Shane managed, fortuitously, to resuscitate his own psychic abilities as a result of immersing himself in a tin bath under a tent out in the grounds. Ray, by contrast, seemed to do little except complain, foment mutiny, and (we're reliably informed) do most of the cooking.

Riveting though 28 Days Haunted was at times, it was hard to persuade ourselves that there was much more to it than some kind of unholy cross between Survivor and The Amazing Race with a few bits of hokey psychic folklore thrown in.

Joel Anderson, dir. & writ.: Lake Mungo (2008)

All in all, none of these programmes can really compare with the sheer sense of strangeness and haunting loss achieved by Australian filmmaker Joel Anderson in his classic faux-documentary Lake Mungo. If only some real film footage could be found to rival the brilliantly executed camera trickery he beguiles us with so impeccably!

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Lake Mungo

James Family Values

Barry Sonnenfeld, dir.: Addams Family Values (1993)

June 17, 1905

Dear Mr. Johnson:

Just back from three months in Europe, I find your letter of May 16th awaiting me, with the very flattering news of my election into the Academy of Arts and Letters. I own that this reply gives me terrible searchings of the heart.

On the one hand the lust of distinction and the craving to be yoked in one Social body with so many illustrious names tempt me to say “yes.” On the other, bidding me say “no,” there is my life‐long practice of not letting my name figure where there is not some definite work doing in which I am willing to bear a share; and there is my life‐long professional habit of preaching against the world and its vanities.

I am not informed that this Academy has any very definite work cut out for it of the sort in which I could bear a useful part; and it suggests tant soit peu the notion of an organization for the mere purpose of distinguishing certain individuals (with their own connivance) and enabling them to say to the world at large “we are in and you are out.”

Ought a preacher against vanities to succumb to such a lure at the very first call? Ought he not rather to “refrain, renounce, abstain,” even tho it seem a sour and ungenial act? On the whole it seems to me that for a philosopher with my pretensions to austerity and righteousness, the only consistent course is to give up this particular vanity, and treat myself as unworthy of the honour, which I assuredly am. And I am the more encouraged to this course by the fact that my younger and shallower and vainer brother is already in the Academy, and that if I were there too, the other families represented might think the James influence too rank and strong.

Let me go, then, I pray you, “release me and restore me to the ground.” If you knew how greatly against the grain these duty‐inspired lines are written, you would not deem me unfriendly or ungenial, but only a little cracked.

By the same token, I think that I ought to resign from the Institute (in which I have played so inactive a part) which act I herewith also perform.

Believe me, dear Mr. Johnson, with longing regret,
heroically yours,

WILLIAM JAMES

Cambridge, Mass.

- Quoted from Letters to the Editor. The New York Times (April 16, 1972)

R. W. B. Lewis: The Jameses: A Family Narrative (1991)

I think you'll agree that this is quite an odd letter to send to someone inviting you to join their organisation - all the more so given that William James had already agreed to be one of the founding members of the American Institute of Arts and Letters some years before.

What can have motivated it? Was it really an expression of humility on his part, or was it - as Leon Edel, in his immense, magisterial five-volume biography of Henry James (1953-1972), suggests - because his "younger and shallower and vainer brother" was already in the Academy: i.e. had been asked first?

It's important to stress that William James was 63 at the time, with a worldwide reputation as one of the most influential psychologists and philosophers then living. His "younger and shallower and vainer brother", Henry, was 62, and already seen as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for which he was nominated in 1911, 1912, and 1916.

William himself, in context, characterises his own reaction to this insult - an Academy daring to offer priority to his younger brother - as "a bit cracked." His choice of words in describing the possible "James influence" on that institution as "too rank and strong" is also strangely visceral - as if there were something lurking in his family background which literally sickened him.

I've written elsewhere about the mountain of books by and about Henry James collected by me over the years. Which is yet another reason for being surprised at Williams' characterisation of this "Master of nuance and scruple" (in W. H. Auden's phrase), this "great and talkative man," as a "younger and shallower and vainer brother." Vain, yes, perhaps - younger, definitely - but shallow? The mind boggles.

The family tree of the Jameses was more or less as follows ("A shilling life will give you all the facts" - Auden again):

Matthew Brady: Henry James Sr. and Henry James Jr. (1854)

On July 28, 1840, [Henry James Sr. (1811–1882), an American theologican and Swedenborgian mystic], was married to Mary Robertson Walsh (1810–1882), the sister of a fellow Princeton seminarian, by the mayor of New York ... The couple lived in New York, and together had five children:

1. William James (1842–1910), a philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
2. Henry James Jr. (1843–1916), an author considered to be among the greatest novelists in the English language ...
3. Garth Wilkinson "Wilkie" James (1845–1883) ...
4. Robertson "Bob" James (1846–1910) ...
5. Alice James (1848–1892), a writer and teacher who became well known for her diary published posthumously in 1934 ...

- Wikipedia: Henry James Sr.

Henry & William James

[It could almost pass for a picture of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, couldn't it? The article I borrowed this image from is even entitled "Henry James’s Smarter Older Brother." And is it just me, or is there something a little territorial in the way William is trying to tower over his brother, while Henry obligingly tilts his head to try and look as small as possible? It's like two cats establishing precedence when they meet in the backyard.]

I guess what interests me most about the James family, though, is not so much the primeval struggle for dominance between the two eldest brothers - it's a psychological commonplace that a second child tries to distinguish him or her self as much as possible from their older sibling. No, it's how that pattern affects the other children that concerns me.

And, yes, I am the youngest in a family of four children: my eldest brother embodies scientific method and logic; the next brother down is completely dedicated to creative writing and the exercise of the existential will; the next down, my sister, was an invalid a little like Alice James, very gifted artistically but unable to deal with the stresses of the workaday world.

So what was left for me, the youngest child? The necessity of avoiding all of these prior choices - in part, or wholly - in order to construct my own independent existence. And how successful have I been? Well, I'm not really in a position to judge: but all I can say is that I believe that your place in the succession, from first to last, has a massive influence on your own individual process of individuation, especially in families with a very dominant ethos: like the Jameses, or the Manns, or (for that matter) the Rosses.

Viktor Mann: Wir waren fünf. Bildnis der Familie Mann [There were five of us: A Mann Family Album] (1949)

Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (1840–1891), Lübeck merchant and senator, married Júlia da Silva Bruhns (1851–1923), a German-Brazilian writer. Together they had five children:

1. [Luiz] Heinrich Mann (1871–1950), author, president of the fine poetry division of the Prussian Academy of Arts ...
2. [Paul] Thomas Mann (1875–1955), author, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate in 1929 ...
3. Julia Elisabeth Therese ['Lula'] Mann (1877–1927), married Josef Löhr (1862–1922), banker. She committed suicide by hanging herself at the age of 50.
4. Carla [Augusta Olga Maria] Mann (1881–1910), actress. She committed suicide by taking poison at the age of 29.
5. Karl Viktor Mann (1890–1949), economist, married Magdalena Nelly Kilian (1895–1962).

- Wikipedia: The Mann Family

Heinrich & Thomas Mann

[In this picture, taken around 1902, Heinrich seems still to be trying to assert dominance over Thomas. He was, after all, a well-known writer and cultural figure by this time. He'd already published a number of books. Thomas, by contrast, had only published one novel, but it was Buddenbrooks, a massively influential work which would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize. Is he already conscious, here, of biding his time?]

You see what I mean about the possible perilous effects of family dynamics? First Carla, then Lula, both sisters, both suicides. Carla was conscious that her acting career was not going as she'd planned: she had little hope left of rivalling her two elder brothers. Whatever miseries drove her to the final act, it cast a long shadow over the whole family. And, then, of course, Lula followed her example seventeen years later.

Thomas Mann's eldest son, Klaus, another writer, who'd striven all his life to get out from under his father's long shadow, would commit suicide in his turn in 1949. He, too, had lived much of his life in a closer-than-close conspiracy with his older sister Erika, a well-known actress married - for passport reasons - to homosexual poet W. H. Auden.

So what am I trying to say about this succession of family tragedies? Nothing to belittle or attempt to 'explain' them, I assure you. Let's return to the Jameses in an effort to make the point a little clearer.

Marie Leon: Henry and William James (early 1900s)

William and Henry had their intense rivalry, co-existing with a genuine love for each other, to keep them going. But what of the rest of the family?

You'll note that both brothers were just of an age to be eligible to join up for the American Civil War (1861-65) - William 19, Henry 18 - when it first broke out. Henry bowed out as the result of an 'obscure hurt', a phrase which generations of critics interpreted to mean some kind of debilitating accident in the genital regions: a little like the hero of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926). It explained a lot.

However, his biographer Leon Edel has deduced from careful sorting of the evidence that it was far more likely to have been a bad back. In any case, it was enough to spare him from joining the forces in any capacity whatsoever. Was it residual guilt over this that explains his rather patronising review of Walt Whitman's poetry book Drum-taps (1865), a record of the older poet's hospital visits and tending of wounded soldiers during the war? Certainly in later life Henry felt deeply ashamed at having so missed the merits of Whitman's work when he first encountered it.

William, by contrast, was already at Harvard, where he made sure he had enough to do in the scientific arena to make it quite impossible for him to find leisure to take note of the war. Nor was he alone in this. As was the case during the Vietnam war, very few university students in the North actually joined the colours. It was mostly those with manual jobs who marched off to the front.

Jane Maher: Biography of Broken Fortunes (1986)

It was Wilkie and Bob, their two younger brothers, who actually joined up. In her book Biography of Broken Fortunes: Wilkie and Bob, Brothers of William, Henry, and Alice James, Jane Maher traces the sorry saga of their lives thereafter: their abortive attempts to be accepted on their own terms, their business and other failures. Wilkie went bankrupt, was left out of his father's will, and died at the early age of 38. "Unsuccessful at poetry and painting, Bob, an alcoholic with a violent temper, spent many years in asylums, and died at 63, not long before his brother William," as her blurb has it.

But that's not really the whole story. It's important to note here that both brothers were legitimate war heroes, men of honour and principle, and that many of their subsequent difficulties ought properly to be attributed to post-traumatic stress. Both volunteered to serve as officers in Massachusetts' newly-formed Black regiments. As Wilkie put it in a speech to Union Veterans many years later:

When I went to war I was a boy of 17 years of age, the son of parents devoted to the cause of the Union and the abolition of slavery. I had been brought up in the belief that slavery was a monstrous wrong, its destruction worthy of a man’s best efforts, even unto the laying down of life.

Wilkie subsequently took part in the heroic (if misguided) Union assault on Battery Wagner in 1863 - the subject of the 1989 civil war film Glory - and was only a few steps behind Colonel Robert Shaw when he died.

Gathering together a knot of men after the suspense of a few seconds, I waved my sword for a further charge toward the living line of fire above us. We had gone then some thirty yards ... Suddenly a shell tore my side. In the frenzy of excitement, it seemed a painless visitation … A still further advance brought us to the second obstruction … The enemy’s fire did not abate for this crossing, and here it was I received my second wound, a canister ball in my foot.

He did eventually recover from his wounds, but walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Bob, too, saw action in the sea islands off coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and nearly died of sunstroke while campaigning in Florida. Little was done by their family after the war to assist them in their transition to civilian life.

When their father decided to buy some land in Florida which he intended to farm with the help of freed slaves, Wilkie was put in charge of the venture. Bob joined him just before local hostility and bad financial conditions put an end to the experiment. They eventually both ended up working for the same railroad in Wisconsin.

Were they failures? In the material sense, perhaps yes. But as Henry remarked (a little guiltily?) of Wilkie:

"He is not particularly successful, as success is measured in this country; but he is always rotund and good-natured and delightful."

- quoted in Carl Swanson, Milwaukee Independent (2021)

As for Bob, his alcoholism gradually estranged him from his family, and:

In 1885 he returned to Concord to become, in the quarter-century remaining to him, an amiable dilettante, painting, writing poetry and endearing himself as a conversationalist of remarkable powers.

- Edwin M. Yoder, The Washington Post (1986)

Henry James found this brother's conversation, too, "charged with natural life, perception, humor and color ... the equivalent, for fine animation, of William's epistolary prowess."

Alice James (1848-1892)

What, then, of Alice, the youngest of the James siblings? Well, in many ways she had the oddest destiny of all. She became a professional invalid in the High Victorian manner: like the sofa-bound Signora Neroni in Trollope's Barchester Towers (1857), or (for that matter), the crippled heir of Redclyffe in Charlotte M. Yonge's famous novel.

Alice James & Katharine Loring (Leamington Spa, 1890)

William, the psychologist, was largely unimpressed by her vapours, but empathetic Henry lavished her with attention. It was mainly for that reason that she shifted her residence to Britain after their parents' death. She also wrote an exceptionally subtle and (at times) acerbic diary, which has become a classic in its own right.

Subsequent biographers and critics, Jean Strouse and Susan Sontag among them, have veered between sympathy and impatience with "Alice-as-icon and Alice-as-victim". She did, however, at least for a time, succeed in putting herself at the centre of the family discourse - which is more than her other two brothers, Wilkie and Bob, ever managed to do.

Leon Edel, ed. The Diary of Alice James (1964)

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Anne Ross: Poinsettia: A Mermaid's Tale (2013)

My own sister, Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991), a gifted writer and artist, took her own life some three decades ago now. The rest of us rage on. Surviving such family conflicts can be a difficult thing to achieve, and it's therefore with more than an Academic interest that I pore over the histories of the Jameses and the Manns - as well as those of various other creative families, the Bells (Julian and Quentin), the Powyses (John, Theodore, Llewellyn and their eight siblings).

I'm not so naïve as to think that such analogues could ever account for the complexities of any human life, but I'm not sure it's really feasible to ignore the similarities in all these Freudian sibling dramas, either.

I'd like to conclude with a poem from my latest book, The Oceanic Feeling. This one comes from the section called "Family plot," which begins with the following epigraph:

These works of fiction, which seem so full of hostility, are none of them really so badly intended … they still preserve, under a slight disguise, the child’s original affection for his parents. The faithlessness and ingratitude are only apparent.

– Sigmund Freud, ‘Family Romances’ (1909)

Jack Ross: The Oceanic Feeling (2021)

Oh br/other!


My eldest brother is flying up

to Auckland
for the weekend
to see my mother

Bronwyn is flying down
to see her sister
in Wellington on Friday

coincidence? hardly
Bronwyn’s younger brother
arrives today

last time we stayed with him
I had a tantrum
and wouldn’t sleep another night

under his roof
I read a thesis recently
on placing far less stress

on Oedipus
the br/other was the term
the author coined

for his new theory
Luke, I am your father!
try your brother

then the sparks will fly  

Anne Ross: Poinsettia (2013)

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