The Four Brontes

Overview

Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bront%C3%AB_family; retrieved 23 August 2023.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths. The first Brontë children to be born to rector Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria were Maria (1814–1825) and Elizabeth (1815–1825), who both died at young ages due to disease. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were then born within a period of approximately four years. These three sisters and their brother, Branwell (1817–1848), who had been born after Charlotte and before Emily, were very close. As children, they developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play, set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set in their fictional world. The deaths of their mother and two older sisters marked them and influenced their writing profoundly, as did their isolated upbringing. They were raised in a religious family. The Brontë birthplace in Thornton is a place of pilgrimage and their later home, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, has hundreds of thousands of visitors yearly.

Recommended Media

Web Resources: Print

Web Resources: Video

THE BRONTE SISTERS (Absolute History; 52 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5SNVbuuNc THE BRONTE SISTERS: The Tragic Lives Of The Literary Icons: Walking Through History (Absolute History; 47 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW7MpqXnz2c THE BRONTE SISTERS: Women Ahead Of Their Time (Perspective; 46 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zYRMpLjiPU EMILY BRONTE (23 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJoOv49ZLlU BRANWELL BRONTE: The Shadow on the Wall (16 mins.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMLPgvYkCY JANE EYRE (British Library): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiDxUF173TY

Three Novels: Video

JANE EYRE (1943 film; 1 hr, 36 mins.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ferjKtrr8 WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939 fil; 1 hr, 45 mins.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EAbYjIGNGw THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1996 BBC series; Amazon Prime): https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.d0b151d4-a636-fa73-a017-65292027a91d?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb or THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1996 BBC series) Episode 1: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2anyfs Episode 2: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ao4ck Episode 3: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2aogv3

Seven Novels & Poetry: Print

The Professor (Charlotte): https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-analyses/the-professor-by-charlotte-bronte-a-19th-century-analysis/ Jane Eyre (Charlotte): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre WHY JANE EYRE STILL MATTERS: https://readgreatliterature.com/why-does-jane-eyre-still-matter/ IS JANE EYRE A YOUNG ADULT NOVEL? https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/apr/19/why-jane-eyre-is-a-ya-novel-charlotte-bronte Shirley (Charlotte): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_(novel) Villette (Charlotte): https://www.thoughtco.com/villette-study-guide-4166436 Wuthering Heights (Emily): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights WUTHERING HEIGHTS IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE BOOK: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/30/17629978/emily-bronte-200-birthday-wuthering-heights FAMOUS AUTHORS COMMENT ON WUTHERING HEIGHTS: https://lithub.com/wuthering-heights-is-a-virgins-story-and-other-opinions-of-brontes-classic/ FIVE EMILY BRONTE POEMS: https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/classic-women-authors-poetry/no-coward-soul-is-mine-5-poems-by-emily-bronte/ THE COMPLETE POETRY OF EMILY BRONTE: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Poems_of_Emily_Bront%C3%AB A DOZEN EMILY BRONTE POEMS: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/poetry.html Agnes Grey (Anne): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Grey The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tenant_of_Wildfell_Hall THE BRONTE SISTERS AS FEMINISTS: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/20/15128698/bronte-sisters-charlotte-emily-anne-branwell-to-walk-invisible-moors
Branwell Charlotte Anne Emily

Art Work

Imaginary Worlds

Glass Town, their original fictional land, was invented by the four together, though Branwell and Charlotte Brontë were the dominant players. After 1831, Charlotte and Branwell branched out into Angria, an extension of Glass Town, while Emily and Anne invented their own private world of Gondal. TALES OF GLASSTOWN: https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Glass-Town-Angria-Gondal/dp/0192827634/ref=sr_1_1? GONDAL’S QUEEN: https://www.amazon.com/Gondals-Queen-Emily-Jane-Bront%C3%AB/dp/0292727119/ref=sr_1_2?
Charlotte
Agnes
Emily
Branwell

Poetry