Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Robert Browning
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William Booth
Simon Bolivar
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William Blake
Otto Von Bismarck
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Alexander Graham Bell
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Henry Ward Beecher
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Friday 19 April 2024
Just Added
NAME: Henry Ward Beecher
WHAT FAMOUS FOR: Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent 19th-century clergyman, social reformer, and abolitionist known for his powerful oratory skills and progressive views on social issues, including abolitionism and women's suffrage.
BIRTH: Henry Ward Beecher was born on June 24, 1813, in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA.
FAMILY BACKGROUND: He was the son of noted minister Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote. Henry Beecher was a revered Presbyterian minister known for his conservative views. Henry was the eighth of 13 children, the brother of several notable figures, including author Harriet Beecher Stowe and educator Catherine Beecher.
CHILDHOOD: Details of Henry's childhood are somewhat limited. Growing up in a large family with a domineering father likely instilled both a sense of discipline and a desire to stand out.
Henry had a childhood stammer and was considered slow-witted;
EDUCATION: Henry attended various local schools with little distinction. His less than stellar performance at Biston Latin school earned him punishments such as being forced to sit for hours in the girls' corner wearing a dunce cap.
He enrolled in Amherst College in 1830. While not a stellar student academically, he honed his oratory skills and emerged as a charismatic leader.
CAREER RECORD: Henry Ward Beecher's career was primarily centered around his role as a minister. Here's his resume:
Began his ministry at a Presbyterian church in Indiana (1832)
Became pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York (1847) – this pulpit launched him into national prominence
Championed the abolitionist movement, raising funds and advocating for social justice
Traveled to England during the Civil War to garner support for the Union cause
Faced a highly publicized adultery trial in 1875, ultimately acquitted by a jury
APPEARANCE: Henry was described as tall well built man. He possessed a charismatic smile and expressive eyes that captivated audiences.
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| Henry Ward Beecher. Library of Congress |
FASHION: He dressed in a manner befitting his status as a prominent clergyman, often wearing conservative and formal attire.
CHARACTER: Henry was known for his charisma, compassion, and progressive views on social issues. He could be both compassionate and fiercely critical, depending on the cause. Beecher was also considered a controversial figure due to his outspoken stance on topics such as abolitionism and women's rights.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: A hallmark of Beecher's preaching style was his use of humor. He incorporated anecdotes, witticisms, and even slang to make his sermons engaging and relatable for a broad audience.
RELATIONSHIPS: Henry married Eunice Bullard White on August 3, 1837. The couple had several children, but their relationship was reportedly strained at times. The public scandal surrounding the adultery trial undoubtedly cast a shadow over his family life.
Henry Ward Beecher had a close relationship with his family, particularly his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, with whom he collaborated on various social causes.
MONEY AND FAME: Henry achieved both wealth and fame through his successful career as a minister and public speaker.
In 1847, he landed the top job at the gargantuan Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and let's just say the pews weren't exactly gathering dust. Thousands flocked to hear Beecher's booming sermons, making him a celebrity preacher long before the invention of televangelism.
FOOD AND DRINK: While not a focal point of his public persona, Henry likely enjoyed traditional New England fare and participated in social dining occasions.
MUSIC AND ARTS: He appreciated the arts and often used cultural references in his sermons to connect with his congregation.
Beecher gets a gold star for accidentally coining a famous advertising slogan. A marketing whiz named Thomas J. Barrett wanted a quote from a prominent figure to promote cleanliness. Beecher, ever the helpful soul, obliged, starting his endorsement with, "If cleanliness is next to godliness..." Barrett, bless his penny-pinching heart, just thanked him and skipped the whole payment thing. Hey, free advertising is still good advertising, right Henry?
LITERATURE: Beyond religious texts, Beecher likely read widely, staying informed on current events and social issues.
Henry Ward Beecher was a prolific writer, publishing numerous sermons, essays, and books on religion, ethics, and social reform.
When wasn't exactly composing fire-and-brimstone sermons, Beecher was getting his ink-stained fingers working – editing an agricultural journal called The Farmer and Gardener.
Beecher wasn't content to just be a midwestern dirt chronicler, though. He set his sights on the big leagues – the New York Independent, a Congregationalist newspaper. He became one of the founding fathers (figuratively, of course) and spent nearly two decades as a key contributor, even serving as editor for a stint. His musings were signed with a little asterisk, a fancy way of saying "look at me, I wrote this!" These starred gems were later collected into a book called Star Papers; or, Experiences of Art and Nature."
The publishing bug bit Beecher good. In 1865, a newspaper bigwig named Robert E. Bonner came knocking, dangling a hefty sum of cash – $24,000! – to follow in his sister's footsteps and write a novel. Beecher, ever the opportunist (and maybe needing a break from all that theology), churned out a story called Norwood, or Village Life in New England.
In 1871, Beecher decided to tackle the ultimate biography – the life and times of Jesus Christ, himself. The result? Life of Jesus, the Christ.
Amongst the many thought-provoking quotes in Beecher's Life Thoughts was, “There are many people who think that Sunday is a sponge to wipe out all the sins of the week.”
NATURE: Henry valued nature and often used natural imagery in his writings and speeches to illustrate spiritual truths.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS: Beyond his professional duties, Henry engaged in intellectual pursuits such as reading and writing.
SCIENCE AND MATHS: While not his primary focus, Henry recognized the importance of scientific knowledge and often sought to reconcile science with faith in his teachings.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY: Henry Ward Beecher's theological views were shaped by his upbringing in a strict Calvinist household. However, he deviated from the traditional doctrines, emphasizing God's love and forgiveness over punishment and predestination. This progressive and inclusive approach resonated with many and helped propel him to national prominence. Beecher believed in applying Christian principles to social issues, advocating for social justice and reform movements like abolitionism.
Beecher was a champion for all sorts of progressive causes – women's rights, temperance and even the then-controversial theory of evolution. He saw Christianity as a living thing, constantly evolving alongside society, not some dusty old rulebook.
But wait, there's more! Beecher was a firebrand abolitionist. He raised money to arm anti-slavery fighters in Kansas and Nebraska, and these rifles became known, with a touch of dark humor, as "Beecher's Bibles." He even held mock auctions where the congregation could "purchase" the freedom of real slaves.
The most famous of these former slaves was a young girl named Pinky, auctioned during a regular Sunday worship service at Plymouth on February 5, 1860. A collection taken up that day raised $900 to buy Pinky from her owner. Imagine a Sunday service turning into a dramatic emancipation event – talk about a powerful message!
SCANDAL: In 1875, Beecher was embroiled in a juicy adultery trial, accused of having a little too much love on the side with a friend's wife. The subsequent trial resulted in a hung jury and was one of the most widely reported trials of the century. The Beecher-Tilton scandal tarnished his squeaky-clean preacher image.
MILITARY RECORD: Henry Ward Beecher did not serve in the military.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS: Henry struggled with health issues throughout his life, including bouts of depression and other ailments.
Beecher had a thing for jewels. Not fancy rings or cufflinks, mind you, but loose gemstones he'd carry around in his pockets. Apparently, they were his comfort objects, a preacher's equivalent of a stress ball. Who knew saving souls could be so…geologically soothing?
HOMES: Throughout his life, Beecher resided in various locations as his career progressed. Early on, he lived in Indiana and Ohio while serving as a pastor at Presbyterian churches.
However, his most significant residence was in Brooklyn, New York. From 1847 onwards, he served as the pastor of Plymouth Church, a position that placed him at the center of American social and religious discourse. This Brooklyn pulpit became his home base for decades, witnessing his rise to national fame and the later controversies that surrounded him.
TRAVEL: Beecher wasn't a stationary preacher. He actively traveled throughout the United States, using his powerful oratory skills to promote abolitionism and social reform. He rallied audiences in various cities, raising awareness and funds for the anti-slavery movement. Notably, during the Civil War, Beecher undertook a crucial mission to England. His persuasive speeches and advocacy helped garner international support for the Union cause. This transatlantic travel played a significant role in influencing public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.
DEATH: Beecher suffered a stroke and passed away in his sleep two days later on March 8, 1887. Brooklyn, still an independent city, declared a day of mourning. He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA: While Beecher himself wouldn't have appeared in media of his time, his life and controversies have likely been explored in various formats over the years. Documentaries focusing on the history of abolitionism or 19th-century religious figures might feature him. Historical fiction novels or stage plays set during that era could also portray him as a character.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Henry Ward Beecher's most significant achievements include his role in advancing abolitionism, his promotion of women's suffrage, and his efforts to reconcile Christianity with social justice and reform. His eloquence and charisma made him one of the most influential figures of his era in shaping public opinion on critical social issues.
NAME: Catherine Esther Beecher
WHAT FAMOUS FOR: Catherine Beecher was a pioneering educator, writer, and advocate for women's education and domestic reform in 19th-century America.
BIRTH: Catherine Esther Beecher was born on September 6, 1800, in East Hampton, New York, USA.
FAMILY BACKGROUND: Catherine came from a prominent and intellectually inclined family. She was the eldest daughter of the famous minister Lyman Beecher and his first wife, Roxana Foote. Her mother instilled strong moral values in her children. Catherine was the eldest of nine children, including her well-known sister, author Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the clergyman and social reformer, Henry Ward Beecher.
CHILDHOOD: Catherine grew up in a stimulating and intellectually rich environment. Her father's role as a minister and her mother's influence likely played a crucial role in shaping her early views on education and reform.
EDUCATION: Catherine was largely educated at home, benefiting from her father's library and his commitment to education. She later attended the Litchfield Female Academy, a progressive school for girls at the time. The limited curriculum available to young women there left Catherine longing for additional opportunities for education.
CAREER RECORD: Catherine Beecher's career was marked by her dedication to education. Here's her resume.
Co-founded the Hartford Female Seminary (1823) with her sister Mary, which offered a more comprehensive curriculum than typical female schools.
Authored influential books on education, including Female Education (1827) and the widely read A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841).
Founded the American Woman's Educational Association (1852) to address the teacher shortage in frontier regions.
Played a key role in establishing women's colleges in Burlington, Iowa, Quincy, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
APPEARANCE: Catherine was described as having a commanding presence, with a tall and imposing figure.
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| Catherine Beecher |
FASHION: She was known for her simple and practical sense of fashion, preferring attire that reflected her commitment to practicality and modesty.
CHARACTER: Catherine Beecher was characterized by her strong will, intelligence, and dedication to advancing women's rights and educational opportunities. She was also described as forthright and opinionated, a trait that sometimes caused controversy.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: Although her public image was serious and focused, it is suggested that she possessed a dry wit and keen sense of humor.
RELATIONSHIPS: Catherine Beecher was all set to tie the knot with Yale professor Alexander M. Fisher. Unfortunately, fate (or perhaps a particularly rogue wave) intervened. Professor Fisher took a permanent leave of absence via a shipwreck off the Irish coast in 1822, leaving Catherine a jilted bride-to-be. She channeled her romantic disappointment into a lifelong mission of empowering women through education, never walking down the aisle but leaving a much bigger mark on the world.
She had a close bond with her family members, particularly her siblings, including Harriet Beecher Stowe.
MONEY AND FAME: While Catherine achieved a degree of fame for her educational work, she was not particularly wealthy. Her primary motivation was social reform, not personal gain.
FOOD AND DRINK: Catherine Beecher was interested in the science of nutrition and advocated for healthy eating and cooking practices.
Catherine wasn't above a good experiment, even if it involved subjecting her students to a diet of nothing but Graham flour (think cardboard, but scratchier). Thankfully, these poor girls staged a delicious mutiny in the form of a fancy restaurant dinner. Catherine, a woman of reason (when not fueled by questionable whole grains), saw the error of her ways and upped the culinary ante. From then on, it was probably less cardboard and more apple pie.
MUSIC AND ARTS: She appreciated the arts but was more focused on educational and reformist activities.
LITERATURE: Catherine, ever the prolific pen-wielder, churned out books like a possessed printing press, publishing numerous works on education, domestic science, and women's rights.. Her magnum opus? A Treatise of Domestic Economy, a guide aimed at turning the average American housewife into a domestic dynamo. Now, this tome got a major makeover later on, thanks to a collaboration with her more famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Together, they rechristened it The American Woman's Home, and it became the ultimate housekeeping bible for generations to come.
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| The American Woman's Home, Title Illustration, 1869. |
NATURE: Catherine believed in the importance of physical health and often promoted outdoor activities and nature walks for women.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS: Her focus was primarily on educational pursuits rather than leisure activities.
SCIENCE AND MATHS: Catherine emphasized the importance of science and mathematics education for women, believing these subjects to be essential for practical living.
ACTIVISM Catherine Beecher had a plan. A grand, petticoat-ruffling plan to remake the education system, starting with women. After her fiancee shuffled off this mortal coil in a shipwreck she remained single-minded – literally – for the rest of her life.
Her weapon of choice? The Hartford Female Seminary. Picture it: a one-room schoolhouse with a grand total of seven students. Not exactly Hogwarts. But Catherine, with the tenacity of a bulldog chewing on a brick, turned it into a bustling academy with nearly 100 students in just three years. Talk about exponential growth!
This was just the beginning, folks. Catherine, ever the restless reformer, packed her bags and followed her preacher-man father to the wild frontier (Cincinnati, in this case) to spread the gospel of education. Her target audience? Women stuck in dead-end "feminine" pursuits (fancy embroidery and fainting spells, most likely) and those toiling away in factories. Catherine wasn't a fan of either.
Now, Catherine wasn't all stern lectures and thimbles. She believed in letting kids be kids, which was a radical notion back then. Imagine, children not being miniature adults in itchy breeches! This forward-thinking attitude led her to champion the cause of kindergartens – a revolutionary idea that would have parents across the land cheering (or at least thanking her for keeping their little hellions occupied for a few hours).
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY: Catherine Beecher's upbringing in a devout Presbyterian household significantly influenced her philosophical and theological views. She believed in the importance of Christian values and saw education as a tool for moral development. Her writings often emphasized the role of women in shaping the moral character of future generations, both within the home and the classroom.
SCANDAL: Catherine Beecher did not have any known scandals associated with her name.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS: Catherine promoted physical fitness and healthy living, considering these vital for a well-rounded education.
HOMES Throughout her life, Catherine Beecher resided in various locations across the United States. Early on, she lived with her family in Connecticut and New York. She also spent time in Ohio while involved in establishing educational institutions there.
TRAVEL Catherine was a dedicated advocate for educational reform and traveled extensively within the United States to promote her ideas. She visited numerous communities, particularly in the frontier regions, to assess educational needs and garner support for establishing schools and teacher training programs.
DEATH Catherine Beecher passed away from apoplexy on May 12, 1878, in Elmira, New York.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA There are no documented film portrayals or direct media appearances by Catherine Beecher herself. However, due to her historical significance in education, her life and work may have been featured in documentaries exploring the history of women's education or 19th-century social reform movements.
ACHIEVEMENTS Championed Educational Opportunities for Women: Catherine's unwavering dedication led to the expansion of educational opportunities for women, particularly in the field of teaching. She believed education empowered women and prepared them to be valuable contributors to society.
Elevated the Importance of Domestic Skills: While advocating for women's education beyond the home, Catherine also saw the importance of domestic skills. Her book, "A Treatise on Domestic Economy," aimed to professionalize homemaking and empower women to manage their households effectively.
Pioneered Kindergartens in the U.S.: Catherine recognized the importance of early childhood education and was a strong proponent of establishing kindergartens in the United States. Her advocacy helped pave the way for the introduction of this crucial educational stage.
Influential Author and Advocate: Catherine authored numerous books and essays that significantly impacted 19th-century American education. Her writings on female education, teacher training, and domesticity shaped public discourse and influenced educational practices of the era.
Thursday 10 August 2017
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
NAME Isambard Kingdom Brunel
WHAT FAMOUS FOR British civil and mechanical engineer who was a key figure of the Industrial Revolution.
BIRTH born April 9, 1806 in Britan Street, Portsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
FAMILY BACKGROUND Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the only son of the French engineer and inventor Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849). His father settled in Britain and married Sophia Kingdom, an English woman whom he had known in France in earlier days.
WHAT FAMOUS FOR British civil and mechanical engineer who was a key figure of the Industrial Revolution.
FAMILY BACKGROUND Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the only son of the French engineer and inventor Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849). His father settled in Britain and married Sophia Kingdom, an English woman whom he had known in France in earlier days.
He was born in Portsmouth, where his father was working on block-making machinery.
EDUCATION Brunel was sent to France at the age of 14 to study mathematics and science at the at the College of Caen in Normandy and the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. Two years later he returned to England to work with his father.
CAREER RECORD At the age of 20 Brunel was appointed resident engineer under his father's direction when work on the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe began. He held the post for over two years, when a sudden inundation almost drowned him and brought the work to a standstill. Work recommenced in 1835 and was finally finished in 1843.
The Wapping to Rotherhithe tunnel was the world’s first underwater walkway. By the end of its first year of operation, a million people had passed through.
He once staged a dinner party in the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe for businessmen in 1827 wearing full evening dress.
During his recuperation, Brunel submitted designs for a competition to build a bridge across the Avon Gorge at Bristol. His graceful suspension design, with a record-breaking main span of 192 m (630 ft) eventually won the competition, and work began on the piers. Lack of money, however, meant that the Clifton Suspension Bridge was not finally completed until 1864, after Brunel's death.
Brunel was an innovative and hardworking engineer. He customarily worked an 18-hour day, sleeping at the office, rising at 4am.
He employed a huge number of subcontractors, and treated them all in a high-handed and sometimes brutal manner. People whom Brunel considered incompetent received abusive letters.
APPEARANCE Brunel was only five foot tall. Because of his small size he always wore a reinforced top hat to make himself look taller.
RELATIONSHIPS Brunel married Mary Horsley in 1836. Their son, Henri Marc Brunel, also enjoyed some success as a civil engineer.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS Brunel had a conjuring trick where he made a half-sovereign coin vanish into his mouth and emerge from his ear. In 1843, while performing it for the amusement of his children, Brunel accidentally swallowed a coin which became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it as did a machine to shake it loose devised by Brunel himself. After several weeks of coughing himself sick, Brunel designed a hinged table to which he was strapped, face down, and upended until his head was pointing towards the floor. The press issued daily reports on the progress of the coin, and eventually it was jerked free. When the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay read the good news, he ran along the street yelling, “It’s out! It’s out!” and nobody asked him what he was talking about.
SCANDAL In the long slog to hack and blast the celebrated Box Tunnel through two miles of solid rock between Bath and Swindon, 100 men were killed.
MILITARY RECORD Brunel worked on the improvement of large guns and designed a floating armoured barge used for the attack on Kronshtadt in 1854 during the Crimean War.
RAILWAYS He was responsible for building more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of railway in the West Country, the Midlands, South Wales, and Ireland. Brunel constructed two railway lines in Italy and was an adviser on the construction of the Victorian lines in Australia and the Eastern Bengal Railway in India.
Brunel had one big failure — an atmospheric railway with trains running on a vacuum tube from Exeter, which closed after troubled trials.
STEAMSHIPS Brunel’s 236 ft steamship Great Western left Bristol on her maiden voyage to New York on April 8, 1838, halving the journey time to 15 days.
The Great Western, a wooden paddle vessel, was the first steamship to provide regular transatlantic service. It confounded critics who asserted that such a vessel would never be able to carry sufficient coal to make the crossing.
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| The Great Western's maiden departure from Bristol in 1838. |
During the Great Western’s maiden voyage to America, Brunel issued instructions from his sickbed after falling off a ladder.
The SS Great Britain was launched on July 19, 1843. It was the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller.
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| Launch of Great Britain at Bristol, July 1843. |
When launched, the Great Britain was by far the largest vessel afloat. She was the longest passenger ship in the world until 1854.
Great Britain was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, She did so for the first time in 1845, in the time of 14 days.
The Great Eastern was propelled by both paddles and screw and was the first ship to utilize a double iron hull.
DEATH The huge and costly effort of launching the Great Eastern sideways into the Thames in January 1858, and the preparation for its first sea trials the following September, caused Brunel to suffer a stroke. His habit of smoking over 40 cigars a day probably contributed to his stroke.
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| Isambard Kingdom Brunel by the launching chains of the SS Great Eastern |
Brunel died ten days later on September 15, 1859 and is buried, like his father, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
ACHIEVEMENTS Brunel came second to Sir Winston Churchill in the BBC’s 1999 poll to find the Greatest ever Briton.
Monday 16 May 2011
Robert Browning
NAME Robert Browning
WHAT FAMOUS FOR English poet
BIRTH b 7 May 1812 Southampton Way, Camberwell, London, England
FAMILY BACKGROUND Robert's father Robert Browning, a man of fine intellect and character, was a well-off clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Revolted by the slavery there, he returned to England and became an abolitionist.
Robert's mother, Sarah Anna Wiedemann, was a devout non conformist Scot. The daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, she was a talented musician,to whom Robert was very close.
Robert was bought up with his younger sister Sarianna in Camberwell. Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years.
CHILDHOOD Robert was an extremely bright child and voracious reader and his father encouraged his interest in literature and the arts. By the age of twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found.
His childhood hero was the poet, Shelley.
EDUCATION After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike to school life, Robert was educated at home by a tutor via the resources of his father's extensive library. He was a rapid learner and by the age of fourteen he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. At the age of sixteen, Robert studied Greek at University College London but dropped out after his first year to pursue his own reading at his own pace. His mother’s staunch evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford University or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England. However, in later years he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.
CAREER RECORD Robert refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations, dedicating himself to poetry. His earliest poem Pauline (1833) achieved little.
CHARACTER Elizabeth Browning said of Robert (see left)in a letter "Robert's goodness and tenderness are past speaking of.... He reads to me, talks and jests to make me laugh." But then she was biased. (1)
RELATIONSHIPS In 1846 Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were secretly married in St Marylebone church after correspondence in praise of her poetry led to their meeting and courtship. He called Elizabeth "A soul offire in a shell of pearl."
Six years his elder and an invalid, Elizabeth could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in September 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. He became an artist and critic, got married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.
After Elizabeth's death, Robert had many flirtatious relationships. He was fond of writing tender, nonsensical verses to his many lady friends.
In 1869 he proposed marriage to Lady Ashburton only to be rejected. This proposal, an example of his propensity towards social climbing, embarrassed Browning in society and shamed him over his infidelity over his dead wife.
MONEY AND FAME Robert stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependant on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.
Robert's wife was the better known poet during their life time, but he kept going in the rat race and gradually acquired a considerable and enthusiastic public fan base. Published separately in four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869, The Ring and the Book was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly thirty years of work. By the time of his death he was ranked as the leading poet of his time along with Tennyson.
FOOD AND DRINK Robert became a vegetarian aged 14 like his hero Shelley, which he gave up later.
MUSIC AND ARTS In 1830 Robert met the actor William Macready and tried several times to write verse drama for the stage - not very successfully. His most successful play was the 1837 Strafford.
Robert inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs.
LITERATURE Robert's father was a literary collector, and he amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them rare. As a result, he was raised in a household of significant literary resources.
Some of Robert's early work was very heavy going. When members of the London Poetic Society asked Browning for an interpretation of a particularly obscure passage, he read it, twice shrugged his soldiers and said "When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows."
Here's a list of some of Browning's major works
1833 Pauline Browning's career began with the publication of this anonymous poem. The piece, which disappeared without notice, would embarrass him for the rest of his life.
1835 Paracelsus The critics adored it but the public ignored it.
1841 Pippa Passes A beautiful collection of dramatic scenes.
1842 The Pied Piper of Hamelin This update of the medieval legend was one of Browning's most popular poems. It is probably the most famous verse written about rats until Michael Jackson sang about a rat called Ben.
1855 Men and Women This collection of fifty-one poems is now generally considered to contain some of the best of Browning's poetry. However, at the time it was not received well and sold poorly.
1868-69 The Ring and The Book This long blank-verse poem is considered by many to be Browning's greatest work. Based on a convoluted murder case from 1690s Rome, it tells the story of the murder in long dramatic monologues from 12 points of view.
1871 Balaustion's Adventure An adaptation of a play by Euripides about Ademtus and his devoted wife, Alcestis.
When challenged to find rhymes for orange, Browning came up with "From the Ganges to the Blorenge comes the Rajah once a month. Sometimes chewing on an orange. Sometimes reading from his Grunth. " (Blorenge is a small mountain in Wales. Grunth is a Sikh Holy Book.)
NATURE A couple of quotes: "And the muttering grew to a mumbling. And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling. And out of the houses the rats came tumbling." (The Pied Piper of Hamelin)
"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you think he ever could recapture
The first fine careless rapture." (Home Thoughts From Abroad)
HOBBIES AND SPORTS In his poem about the unfortunate Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, who ran 26 miles to announce the Greek's glorious victory over the Persians before dropping dead, Browning wrote sympathetically, "Bursting his veins, he died, The bliss!"
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY When he was a teenager, Browning shocked his evangelical mother when he declared himself like his hero Shelley, an atheist. In later life he looked back on this as a passing phase and he became a knowledgeable Bible reader but always denied any Christian faith.
"God's in his Heaven. Alls right with the world." (Pippa Passes")
SCANDAL Browning's father in Law didn't smell a rat until Robert eloped with Elizabeth to Italy.
HOMES Browning was brought up at Southampton Way, Camberwell.
After he eloped to Italy with Elizabeth, they lived at Casa Guidi, Florence, which is now a home available to be rented.
After the death of Elizabeth in 1861 he spent the "season" in London and rest of time in the country or abroad. Between 1861 and 1887, his London address was 19 Warwick Crescent in Little Venice, Maida Vale. It is thought it was Browning who coined the name 'Little Venice.'
TRAVEL Browning travelled widely, joining a British diplomatic mission to St Petersburg, Russia in 1834, later journeying to Italy 1838 and 1844.
When the Brownings eloped from Wimpole Street, Robert was unable to work out the train and ferry timetables for their journey to Le Havre on their way to Italy. Elizabeth had to return to Wimpole Street for several days to take charge of organising the details of their elopement herself.
In 1878, he returned to Italy for the first time since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several occasions
"Oh to be in England. Now that April's here." (Home Thoughts From Abroad 1845).
DEATH Browning died on 12 December 1889 at his son's apartment in the Ca' Rezzonico, Venice of bronchitis. He was brought back to London for burial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. The classic 1936 Hollywood movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street was based on a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier of the same title. Norma Shearer who played Elizabeth was Oscar-nominated, while Fredric March portrayed Robert Browning. In 1957 it was Jennifer Jones and Bill Travers turn to portray the same twosome.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono were inspired by the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They often joked they were the reincarnated spirits of "Bob and Liz". Two tracks, "Let Me Count The Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" on the Milk and Honey album were inspired by the poetry of Bob and Liz.
3. Clifford T Ward's "Home Thoughts From Abroad" is a tribute to Robert Browning. "You know, Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem
And I know how Robert Browning must have felt. 'Cause I'm feeling the same way about you."
ACHIEVEMENTS (1) Browning's innovative works incorporated psychological analysis and obscure historical characters and perfected the dramatic monologue. They have influenced many 20th century poet's such as Ezra Pound.
(2) His literary status was recognised by the award of an honorary fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford in 1867
Sources 1.800 years of Women's Letters Olga Kenyon
2. Wikipedia
WHAT FAMOUS FOR English poet
BIRTH b 7 May 1812 Southampton Way, Camberwell, London, England
FAMILY BACKGROUND Robert's father Robert Browning, a man of fine intellect and character, was a well-off clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Revolted by the slavery there, he returned to England and became an abolitionist.
Robert's mother, Sarah Anna Wiedemann, was a devout non conformist Scot. The daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, she was a talented musician,to whom Robert was very close.
Robert was bought up with his younger sister Sarianna in Camberwell. Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years.
CHILDHOOD Robert was an extremely bright child and voracious reader and his father encouraged his interest in literature and the arts. By the age of twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found.
His childhood hero was the poet, Shelley.
EDUCATION After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike to school life, Robert was educated at home by a tutor via the resources of his father's extensive library. He was a rapid learner and by the age of fourteen he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. At the age of sixteen, Robert studied Greek at University College London but dropped out after his first year to pursue his own reading at his own pace. His mother’s staunch evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford University or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England. However, in later years he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.
CAREER RECORD Robert refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations, dedicating himself to poetry. His earliest poem Pauline (1833) achieved little.
CHARACTER Elizabeth Browning said of Robert (see left)in a letter "Robert's goodness and tenderness are past speaking of.... He reads to me, talks and jests to make me laugh." But then she was biased. (1)
RELATIONSHIPS In 1846 Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were secretly married in St Marylebone church after correspondence in praise of her poetry led to their meeting and courtship. He called Elizabeth "A soul offire in a shell of pearl."
Six years his elder and an invalid, Elizabeth could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in September 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. He became an artist and critic, got married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.
After Elizabeth's death, Robert had many flirtatious relationships. He was fond of writing tender, nonsensical verses to his many lady friends.
In 1869 he proposed marriage to Lady Ashburton only to be rejected. This proposal, an example of his propensity towards social climbing, embarrassed Browning in society and shamed him over his infidelity over his dead wife.
MONEY AND FAME Robert stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependant on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.
Robert's wife was the better known poet during their life time, but he kept going in the rat race and gradually acquired a considerable and enthusiastic public fan base. Published separately in four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869, The Ring and the Book was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly thirty years of work. By the time of his death he was ranked as the leading poet of his time along with Tennyson.
FOOD AND DRINK Robert became a vegetarian aged 14 like his hero Shelley, which he gave up later.
MUSIC AND ARTS In 1830 Robert met the actor William Macready and tried several times to write verse drama for the stage - not very successfully. His most successful play was the 1837 Strafford.
Robert inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs.
LITERATURE Robert's father was a literary collector, and he amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them rare. As a result, he was raised in a household of significant literary resources.
Some of Robert's early work was very heavy going. When members of the London Poetic Society asked Browning for an interpretation of a particularly obscure passage, he read it, twice shrugged his soldiers and said "When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows."
Here's a list of some of Browning's major works
1833 Pauline Browning's career began with the publication of this anonymous poem. The piece, which disappeared without notice, would embarrass him for the rest of his life.
1835 Paracelsus The critics adored it but the public ignored it.
1841 Pippa Passes A beautiful collection of dramatic scenes.
1842 The Pied Piper of Hamelin This update of the medieval legend was one of Browning's most popular poems. It is probably the most famous verse written about rats until Michael Jackson sang about a rat called Ben.
1855 Men and Women This collection of fifty-one poems is now generally considered to contain some of the best of Browning's poetry. However, at the time it was not received well and sold poorly.
1868-69 The Ring and The Book This long blank-verse poem is considered by many to be Browning's greatest work. Based on a convoluted murder case from 1690s Rome, it tells the story of the murder in long dramatic monologues from 12 points of view.
1871 Balaustion's Adventure An adaptation of a play by Euripides about Ademtus and his devoted wife, Alcestis.
When challenged to find rhymes for orange, Browning came up with "From the Ganges to the Blorenge comes the Rajah once a month. Sometimes chewing on an orange. Sometimes reading from his Grunth. " (Blorenge is a small mountain in Wales. Grunth is a Sikh Holy Book.)
NATURE A couple of quotes: "And the muttering grew to a mumbling. And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling. And out of the houses the rats came tumbling." (The Pied Piper of Hamelin)
"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you think he ever could recapture
The first fine careless rapture." (Home Thoughts From Abroad)
HOBBIES AND SPORTS In his poem about the unfortunate Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, who ran 26 miles to announce the Greek's glorious victory over the Persians before dropping dead, Browning wrote sympathetically, "Bursting his veins, he died, The bliss!"
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY When he was a teenager, Browning shocked his evangelical mother when he declared himself like his hero Shelley, an atheist. In later life he looked back on this as a passing phase and he became a knowledgeable Bible reader but always denied any Christian faith.
"God's in his Heaven. Alls right with the world." (Pippa Passes")
SCANDAL Browning's father in Law didn't smell a rat until Robert eloped with Elizabeth to Italy.
HOMES Browning was brought up at Southampton Way, Camberwell.
After he eloped to Italy with Elizabeth, they lived at Casa Guidi, Florence, which is now a home available to be rented.
After the death of Elizabeth in 1861 he spent the "season" in London and rest of time in the country or abroad. Between 1861 and 1887, his London address was 19 Warwick Crescent in Little Venice, Maida Vale. It is thought it was Browning who coined the name 'Little Venice.'
TRAVEL Browning travelled widely, joining a British diplomatic mission to St Petersburg, Russia in 1834, later journeying to Italy 1838 and 1844.
When the Brownings eloped from Wimpole Street, Robert was unable to work out the train and ferry timetables for their journey to Le Havre on their way to Italy. Elizabeth had to return to Wimpole Street for several days to take charge of organising the details of their elopement herself.
In 1878, he returned to Italy for the first time since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several occasions
"Oh to be in England. Now that April's here." (Home Thoughts From Abroad 1845).
DEATH Browning died on 12 December 1889 at his son's apartment in the Ca' Rezzonico, Venice of bronchitis. He was brought back to London for burial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. The classic 1936 Hollywood movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street was based on a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier of the same title. Norma Shearer who played Elizabeth was Oscar-nominated, while Fredric March portrayed Robert Browning. In 1957 it was Jennifer Jones and Bill Travers turn to portray the same twosome.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono were inspired by the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They often joked they were the reincarnated spirits of "Bob and Liz". Two tracks, "Let Me Count The Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" on the Milk and Honey album were inspired by the poetry of Bob and Liz.
3. Clifford T Ward's "Home Thoughts From Abroad" is a tribute to Robert Browning. "You know, Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem
And I know how Robert Browning must have felt. 'Cause I'm feeling the same way about you."
ACHIEVEMENTS (1) Browning's innovative works incorporated psychological analysis and obscure historical characters and perfected the dramatic monologue. They have influenced many 20th century poet's such as Ezra Pound.
(2) His literary status was recognised by the award of an honorary fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford in 1867
Sources 1.800 years of Women's Letters Olga Kenyon
2. Wikipedia
Tuesday 10 May 2011
Elizabeth Browning
NAME Elizabeth (Moulton) Barrett Browning. Elizabeth and her siblings all had nicknames - Elizabeth's was "Ba".
WHAT FAMOUS FOR English poet famous for her love poetry.
BIRTH March 6, 1806 Coxhoe Hall, nr Durham (demolished in 1980s.)
FAMILY BACKGROUND Elizabeth's parents were Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke, who married at St Nicholas Church, Gosforth (Tyne and Wear). His family, some of whom were part Creole, had lived for centuries in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labour. Her mum came from a wealthy Newcastle family, also derived in part from slave labour. Liz lost her mother when she was 22.
Elizabeth was the eldest of their 12 children (eight boys and four girls). All the children lived to adulthood except for one girl, who died at the age of four when Elizabeth was eight. In 1840 her oldest and favorite brother Edward was tragically drowned.
CHILDHOOD Elizabeth was baptized at the age of 3 at Kelloe Parish Church, though she had already been baptized by a family friend in the first week after she was born. Later that year, their father bought Hope End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Elizabeth had "a large room to herself, with stained glass in the window, and she loved the garden where she tended white roses in a special arbour by the south wall". (1) Liz lived a privileged childhood riding her pony round the grounds visiting other families in the neighbourhood and arranging family theatrical productions with her 11 brothers and sisters. She was a lively child until she suffered a spinal injury at the age of 15.
Liz's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man. As a present for her fourteenth birthday her father underwrote the publication of her epic Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon .
EDUCATION Liz was educated at home and attended lessons with her brother's tutor. This gave her a good education for a girl of that time. She was an intensely studious, precocious child and had read passages from Paradise Lost and Shakespearean plays, and the histories of England, Greece and Rome before the age of ten.
In her teen years went through the principal Greek and Latin authors in their original languages and learnt enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from the beginning to the end.
CAREER RECORD 1820 Elizabeth's first published work, The Battle of Marathon.
1825 The Rose and Zephyr is published in the Literary Gazette.
1838 The Seraphim and other Poems is the first volume of Browning's poetry to appear in her name.
APPEARANCE Elizabeth (see left) was pretty and personable. Mary Russell Mitford wrote of her about the time she'd turned 20, "A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Her Creole ancestry gave Liz a slightly exotic look. Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as, "Very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth. FASHION Browning forced her 12 year old son to wear frilly knickerbockers and shoulder length ringlets.
CHARACTER Large minded, intelligent, quietly sympathetic manner, neurotic, emotional.
RELATIONSHIPS By 1844 Elizabeth had been an invalid for many years, spending most of her time in her upstairs room, spending much of her time writing. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land at the time and inspired well known poet Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her poems. A family friend Kenyon arranged for Robert Browning to meet Elizabeth in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature.
The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. After a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, making her Bobby's girl, Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in September 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal nurse, Wilson, who witnessed the marriage, accompanied the couple to Italy.
Her father disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married. She repeatedly sought a reconciliation with her father but he returned her letters unopened.
As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son became an artist, got married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.
"I love thee with a love, I seemed to lose with my lost Saints
I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life!
And if God chose I shall but love thee better after death." from Sonnets from the Portuguese "Portuguese" was a pet name her husband used.
MONEY AND FAME Elizabeth's extraordinary poems brought admirers (including Browning) to the room where she languished in her bed after her spinal injury. In her day she was more highly regarded poetry wise than Robert and was the most highly regarded female poet of her day. However her 1860 Political Poems Before Congress injured her popularity as many disapproved of the Browning version of Italian political matters.
LITERATURE Liz's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man. As a present for her fourteenth birthday her father underwrote the anonymous publication of her epic Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon .
1838 The Seraphim and other Poems is favourably reviewed.
1844 Poems An important collection in Victorian literature. So highly regarded that when Wordsworth died she was tipped by many to be the next Poet Laureate.
1850 Sonnets from the Portuguese. (From Robert Browning's pet name for her "The Portuguese".) Elizabeth's most famous work was inspired by her love for her husband. At the time she was still in a hot flush over the mere mention of his name.
1857 Aurora Leigh, her verse novel about the subjection of women to the dominating male.
1861 The North and the South. The last poem she wrote before her death. An admirer of Hans Christian Anderson, her last poem was written for him shortly before her death.
In 1913 500 letters written by Elizabeth and Robert were sold for £32750 at an auction.
NATURE Flush, a red cocker spaniel was the only companion allowed to the invalid Elizabeth by her tyrannical father. The first time Robert visited Elizabeth at Wimpole Street, Flush bit him. She took Flush with her to Italy with Robert and the mutt was immortalised by her the poem To Flush my Dog. Virginia Woolf later wrote his life story.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Elizabeth was bought up by a family that attended services at the nearest dissenting chapel and her father was active for years in Bible missionary societies. Liz herself went through an evangelical “phase” and it is not clear how much she retained her faith as she developed an interest in spiritualism. However, she wrote a number of pieces about social injustice including the slave trade in America, the labor of children in the mines and mills of England and the restrictions placed upon women. Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau influenced her concern for human rights.
Elizabeth was fascinated by Italian politics and she supported (theoretically) Italian unity.
SCANDAL During her time as an invalid, Elizabeth became addicted to opium due to the pain of her spinal condition. She knocked back laudanum, a cocktail of opium and alcohol to help her to sleep. Robert Browning used Chianti to wean and cure his Elizabeth of her addiction to laudanum.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS I've touched on Elizabeth's invalid condition previously in this trivial biography, but here's her full medical bulletin.
At the age of 15 Liz fell from a pony and injured her spine. She was slow to recover so a Dr Coker prescribed opium for a nervous disorder and she carried on taking it for the next 25 years. However it only made her worse and for much of the time she was bedridden, especially after 1838 when a burst blood vessel made her seriously ill.
Elizabeth's health forced her to move to Torquay on Devonshire coast, where her brother Edward accompanied her. His death by drowning was a massive blow and she returned to Wimpole Street and became a permanent recluse seeing only a few people.
In 1846, in preparation for her elopement with Robert, Elizabeth began to free herself of the habits acquired as an invalid practising standing without help and then walking where she had previously been carried.
She finally got better in Italy away from her oppressive father.
HOMES Elizabeth was brought up at the 240 acre Hope End, Herefordshire, near the Malvern Hills, which inspired some of her early poetry.
1832-37 The family moved three times due to Mr Barrett's financial losses, first Sidmouth, then 99 Gloucester Place, London, then 50 Wimpole Street, London.
1838-41 Due to her illness, Elizabeth moved back to Torquay (1 Beacon Terrace), and the sea air.
1846 Browning eloped to Italy, at Casa Guidi, Florence, now a home available to be rented. She lived in Florence until her death.
DEATH At the death of an old friend, G.B. Hunter, and then of her father, Elizabeth's health faded again, centering around deteriorating lung function. When news of the death of Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta reached her, in 1860, she became weak and depressed. Her faithful husband never left her bedside and she spent the last day of her life asleep in his arms. Elizabeth died on 29 June 1861 at Casa Guidi, and was buried in Florence's Protestant Cemetery.
She became gradually weaker and died on 29 June 1861
Died 1861 in Florence. Shortly after hearing of her father's death she suffered a complete physical collapse. Her faithful husband never left her bedside & she spent the last day of her life asleep in his arms. (2) She fell ill and died at Casa Guidi, and was buried in Florence's Protestant Cemetery.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. The classic Hollywood movie 1936 The Barretts of Wimpole Street was based on a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier of the same title. Norma Shearer who played Elizabeth was Oscar-nominated, while Charles Laughton portrayed the formidable Mr Browning. In 1957 it was Jennifer Jones and John Gielgud's turn to portray the same twosome.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono were inspired by the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They often joked they were the reincarnated spirits of "Bob and Liz". Two tracks, "Let Me Count The Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" on the Milk and Honey album were inspired by the poetry of Bob and Liz.
ACHIEVEMENTS A plaque in Kelloe church, where she was christened describes Elizabeth as "a great poetess, a noble woman, a devoted wife."
Sources (1) Rosalie Mader Mrs Browning: The Story of Elizabeth Barrett
(2) Wikipedia
Sunday 1 May 2011
Emily Brontë
NAME Emily Brontë
WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author
BIRTH b 30 July 1818 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
FAMILY BACKGROUND Emily was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Emily had four sisters including Charlotte (1818-1848) who wrote Jane Eyre and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.
CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Emily (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. She filled thousands of pages of miniature books writing about her imaginary kingdom, continuing to do so until 1845.
EDUCATION In August 1824, Emily was sent with three of her sisters, Charlotte, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, (which Charlotte would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth ho died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Emily's father removed her and Charlotte from the school. Their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by Charlotte.
At the age of seventeen, Emily became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, where Charlotte was a teacher, but managed to stay only three months before being overcome by extreme homesickness. She returned home and Anne took her place. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own
CAREER RECORD Emily took up various positions as governesses and teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for her brother Branwell. her CV reads thus:
1838-9 Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she was twenty. Her health broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and she returned home in April 1839.
1839-42 A stay-at-home daughter, doing most of the cooking and cleaning and teaching Sunday school. She taught herself German out of books and practiced piano.
1842-43 Emily accompanied Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, where they attended a girls' academy run by Constantin Heger. They planned to perfect their French and German in anticipation of f returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Emily set up with Charlotte a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Emily's only novel, Wuthering Heights was published.
CHARACTER Emily was a silent, reserved woman almost to the point of rudeness with strangers. In private she was somewhat wacky, preferring to live in her imaginary land of Gondal, and mystical to the extent that Charlotte had to tone down her image after she died. There's nowt as queer as folk.
RELATIONSHIPS The introverted Emily was a loner and never socialised well. She had few friends outside her family.
MONEY AND FAME Whilst Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, Emily's fame was wholly posthumous. Within a few years of her death, Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth.
FOOD AND DRINK Emily and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.
LITERATURE After leaving school, Emily and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into notebooks. In the fall of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused, but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed she had been writing poems in secret as well.
In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, and Emily's Wuthering Heights along with Anne's Agnes Grey, were both accepted.
The ideas for Wuthering Heights evolved from Gondal, her fantasy world set on a Pacific island. Her classic, poetic story was about Heathcliffe's doomed, obsessional love for Cathy located on the Yorkshire moors that Emily knew so well. The 'Wuthering Height’'s building itself is said to be modelled on a local farm house.
The critics were initially shocked by the novel's immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature. One referred to it as "brutal, coarse & vulgar”. The book subsequently became an English literary classic.
PETS Emily had a a large mastiff dog called Keeper who was so beloved that she rose from her sickbed the evening before her death to feed him . When she died, Keeper followed her coffin and then according to Charlotte, came into the church with the family, “lying in the pew couched at [their] feet while the burial service was being read”
She also had a cat called Tiger who played at Emily’s feet while she wrote Wuthering Heights.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS Emily and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Emily was a silent, reserved, emotionally bound up woman. In private she preferred to live in her imagined land of Gondal rather than the real world. The mystical writer was obsessed by death and her classic, poetical story, Wuthering Heights, about Heathcliffe’s doomed, obsessional love for Cathy shocked many critics with its immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Throughout her last consumptive illness, Emily refused all drugs and medical attention despite being in extreme pain during its later stages.
HOMES Until 1820 Emily lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Emily and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s
DEATH Emily's health, like her sisters', had been weakened by unsanitary conditions at home and at school. Having caught She caught a cold during the funeral of her brother in September 1848, she grew very thin and ill, but rejected medical help and refused all proffered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her. She died on 19 December 1848 at about two in the afternoon. Emily was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family vault, Haworth, West Yorkshire.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Wuthering Heights The 1939 movie with with Larry Olivier as Heathcliffe and Merle Oberon as Cathy is by far the finest of several film versions of Emily's classic novel. "No matter what I ever do or say Heathcliffe, this is me-now-standing on this hill with you. This is me, forever," said Merle Oberon memorably. The second best version was probably the 1970 one with Timothy "007" Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall (what happened to her?) The 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche with remarkably Sinead O'Connor as Emily was a Bernard Matthews. We mustn't forget Sir Cliff's 1995 musical version and the Monty Python semaphore version.
2. Kate Bush's 1978 UK #1 Wuthering Heights was the single that introduced her to the public. (Incidentally Kate Bush shares the same birthday as Emily).
3. Devotion, a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.
ACHIEVEMENTS
WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author
BIRTH b 30 July 1818 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
FAMILY BACKGROUND Emily was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Emily had four sisters including Charlotte (1818-1848) who wrote Jane Eyre and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.
CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Emily (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. She filled thousands of pages of miniature books writing about her imaginary kingdom, continuing to do so until 1845.
EDUCATION In August 1824, Emily was sent with three of her sisters, Charlotte, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, (which Charlotte would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth ho died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Emily's father removed her and Charlotte from the school. Their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by Charlotte.
At the age of seventeen, Emily became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, where Charlotte was a teacher, but managed to stay only three months before being overcome by extreme homesickness. She returned home and Anne took her place. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own
CAREER RECORD Emily took up various positions as governesses and teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for her brother Branwell. her CV reads thus:
1838-9 Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she was twenty. Her health broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and she returned home in April 1839.
1839-42 A stay-at-home daughter, doing most of the cooking and cleaning and teaching Sunday school. She taught herself German out of books and practiced piano.
1842-43 Emily accompanied Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, where they attended a girls' academy run by Constantin Heger. They planned to perfect their French and German in anticipation of f returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Emily set up with Charlotte a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Emily's only novel, Wuthering Heights was published.
CHARACTER Emily was a silent, reserved woman almost to the point of rudeness with strangers. In private she was somewhat wacky, preferring to live in her imaginary land of Gondal, and mystical to the extent that Charlotte had to tone down her image after she died. There's nowt as queer as folk.
RELATIONSHIPS The introverted Emily was a loner and never socialised well. She had few friends outside her family.
MONEY AND FAME Whilst Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, Emily's fame was wholly posthumous. Within a few years of her death, Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth.
FOOD AND DRINK Emily and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.
LITERATURE After leaving school, Emily and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into notebooks. In the fall of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused, but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed she had been writing poems in secret as well.
In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, and Emily's Wuthering Heights along with Anne's Agnes Grey, were both accepted.
The ideas for Wuthering Heights evolved from Gondal, her fantasy world set on a Pacific island. Her classic, poetic story was about Heathcliffe's doomed, obsessional love for Cathy located on the Yorkshire moors that Emily knew so well. The 'Wuthering Height’'s building itself is said to be modelled on a local farm house.
The critics were initially shocked by the novel's immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature. One referred to it as "brutal, coarse & vulgar”. The book subsequently became an English literary classic.
PETS Emily had a a large mastiff dog called Keeper who was so beloved that she rose from her sickbed the evening before her death to feed him . When she died, Keeper followed her coffin and then according to Charlotte, came into the church with the family, “lying in the pew couched at [their] feet while the burial service was being read”
She also had a cat called Tiger who played at Emily’s feet while she wrote Wuthering Heights.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS Emily and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Emily was a silent, reserved, emotionally bound up woman. In private she preferred to live in her imagined land of Gondal rather than the real world. The mystical writer was obsessed by death and her classic, poetical story, Wuthering Heights, about Heathcliffe’s doomed, obsessional love for Cathy shocked many critics with its immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Throughout her last consumptive illness, Emily refused all drugs and medical attention despite being in extreme pain during its later stages.
HOMES Until 1820 Emily lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Emily and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s DEATH Emily's health, like her sisters', had been weakened by unsanitary conditions at home and at school. Having caught She caught a cold during the funeral of her brother in September 1848, she grew very thin and ill, but rejected medical help and refused all proffered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her. She died on 19 December 1848 at about two in the afternoon. Emily was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family vault, Haworth, West Yorkshire.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Wuthering Heights The 1939 movie with with Larry Olivier as Heathcliffe and Merle Oberon as Cathy is by far the finest of several film versions of Emily's classic novel. "No matter what I ever do or say Heathcliffe, this is me-now-standing on this hill with you. This is me, forever," said Merle Oberon memorably. The second best version was probably the 1970 one with Timothy "007" Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall (what happened to her?) The 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche with remarkably Sinead O'Connor as Emily was a Bernard Matthews. We mustn't forget Sir Cliff's 1995 musical version and the Monty Python semaphore version.
2. Kate Bush's 1978 UK #1 Wuthering Heights was the single that introduced her to the public. (Incidentally Kate Bush shares the same birthday as Emily).
3. Devotion, a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.
ACHIEVEMENTS
1. Wuthering Heights is the best selling Penguin Classic in the UK.
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause. You could say Emily's tragic masterpiece was a great weep forward.
REFERENCES Wikipedia and my knowledge.
Wuthering Heights
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause. You could say Emily's tragic masterpiece was a great weep forward.
REFERENCES Wikipedia and my knowledge.
Wuthering Heights
Charlotte Brontë
NAME Charlotte Brontë
WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author
BIRTH April 21, 1816 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
FAMILY BACKGROUND Charlotte was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish Mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Charlotte had four sisters including Emily (1818-1848) who wrote Wuthering Heights and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . She acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters." Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.
CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. Over the next ten years, she filled thousands of pages of miniature books imagining and chronicling the fantastic world of Angria.
EDUCATION In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Charlotte's father removed her and Emily from the school. I'm told the Clergy Daughters' School still exists, though it was moved to Casterton shortly after the scandal.
Afterwards their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by her. In 1831 14-year-old Charlotte became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, but left the following year to teach her sisters at home.
CAREER RECORD Charlotte took up various positions as governesses & teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for their brother Branwell. Her CV reads thus:
1835-8 A teacher at her old school at Roe Head.
1839 A governess with Sidgwick family near Skipton
1841 A governess with a family at Rawdon
1842-43 Studied languages and school management at Brussels and taught at a boarding school, the Pensionnat Héger, in the hope of returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Charlotte set up with Emily a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Charlotte's first novel, Jane Eyre was published.
1850s Charlotte cared for her aged father.
APPEARANCE Charlotte was a wee slip of a girl with brown hair, a square heavily featured face, bad complexion, fine eyes and spectacles. GH Lewis, (George Eliot's lover) described Charlotte as "a little plain, provincial, sickly looking old maid." She was very self-conscious about her teeth and never smiled with her mouth open. .
CHARACTER When at home, Charlotte was a saintly drudge, a long suffering victim of duty, but away a passionate, manipulative, dynamic, emotional rebellious lady who was criticised as being un-befitting a clergyman's daughter. By Gum they were a sensitive lot up there.
RELATIONSHIPS For years Charlotte thought she was too plain to marry and was consequently eloquent about the loneliness of a single woman. She fell in love several times herself including one Monsieur Héger, a choleric, small professor of logic whom she met whilst teaching in Belgium. When she returned to Haworth she continued to correspond with him, despite the fact he was married already, until he ceased the letters. Charlotte was heartbroken.
However, all was not lost. Charlotte actually received four proposals of marriage before, on 29th June 1854, she married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Nicholls after initial violent objections from her dad. Charlotte wore a white muslin wedding dress with delicate green embroidery and a lace trimmed bonnet. It was said she looked like a "snowdrop".
Arthur was faithful, pleasant ans indomitable and Charlotte at first merely admired but later grew to love her hubby. He did not share their intellectual interests but made her happy. They had nine months of an increasingly happy marriage as Charlotte found joy in domestic love. But in March 1855 Charlotte died.
The extroverted Charlotte had many friends including her future biographer, Mrs Gaskell.
MONEY AND FAME Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, William Makepiece Thackery was especially keen. Within a few years Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth. An American bought up part of Charlotte’s discarded sash window & carried it on his back to Keighley station.
The frenchified Brontë (with the accent over the "E") was Arthur Nicholls idea.
FOOD AND DRINK Charlotte and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.
LITERATURE After leaving school, Charlotte and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. Charlotte used the pseudynomn "Currer Bell" when she published her first two novels.
Charlotte was the first to try to get something published, a small book of poems written by her, Emily & Anne under the names Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell (named thus so as not to reveal their gender). Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, Charlotte, The Professor, which only came out posthumously in 1857, Emily, Wuthering Heights and Anne, Agnes Grey, which were both accepted. The disappointed Charlotte quickly raced off Jane Eyre, which actually got published before her sister's novels.
In case you don't know, Jane Eyre is about an orphan girl who grew up to become a governess in a mysterious neighbourhood. The first half was written whilst Charlotte nursed her father through the aftermath of a dangerous eye operation in a hotel. The plucky, plain downtrodden Jane was partly based on Charlotte's own experiences and Rochester supposedly on Lord Byron. The Morton to which Jane fled from Thornfield Hall corresponds to the village of Hathersage in the Peak District. The deserted Wycollier Hall on Brontë Way was Jane Eyre's Ferndean Manor. Lowood School was based on Cowan Bridge School.
Other novels were:
1849 Shirley The heroine was based on Emily
1853 Villette, which was written as a result of Charlotte's heartbreak over Monsieur Héger.
Charlotte left several unfinished novels when she died including Emma, which was eventually finished and published in 1980 by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady.",
PETS After Branwell, then Emily, and then Anne died within months of each other, Emily's dog Keeper and Anne's dog Flossey provided Charlotte some solace in her grief.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS Charlotte and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY The saintly, long-suffering Charlotte Brontë was an Anglican feminist and a passionate anti-Catholic who had been influenced by her Wesleyan family background with its belief that only complete adherence to God’s will brings salvation. These themes stand out in her Jane Eyre, where only after the brooding romantic Mr Rochester’s blindness, like St Paul, and his subsequent repentance to God can the book's heroine and Rochester be bought together.
Politically a Tory, Charlotte preached tolerance rather than revolution. Despite her shyness in company, she was always prepared to argue her beliefs.
SCANDAL The extent of Charlotte Brontë's feelings for Monsieur Héger were not fully realised until 1913, when her letters to him were published for the first time. These letters, referred to as the 'Héger Letters', had been ripped up at some stage by Héger, but his wife had retrieved the pieces from the wastepaper bin and had meticulously sewn them back together.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS The sickly Charlotte believed her time at the poorly run Cowan Bridge School, where two of her sisters both died of consumption permanently ruined her health.
HOMES
Until 1820 Charlotte lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Charlotte and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s.
TRAVEL A favorite walk of the sisters lead for two miles west to the Brontë waterfall, by no means Niagara size, just a mere trickle. Charlotte came here to mourn the loss of her sisters.
In view of the enormous success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her publisher to occasionally visit London, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not like to leave her ageing father's side.
In 1851 Charlotte visited the Great Exhibition in London and attended lectures by Thackery. The same year she also journeyed to the Lake District and Scotland and Manchester
DEATH Charlotte found she was pregnant not long after her marriage, and it was felt she would have a difficult pregnancy due to previous ill-health. Despite this, her husband insisted on her accompanying him to visiting the Brontë waterfall in the rain. The ground underneath was extremely damp and Charlotte caught a chill, leading to pneumonia. She died on 31 March 1855 at Haworth House & are buried at St Michael’s Church there.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Loads of TV and movie versions of Jane Eyre including one in 1943 where Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles starred as those famous fictional Brits, Jane Eyre & Rochester. In 1970 the lovely Susannah York played the supposedly plain Jane and George C "Patton" Scott, Rochester. There was also a 2006 BBC version, starring Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, which you can see below.
2. Mrs Gaskill's Life of Charlotte (1857), is one of the classic biographies, and helped promote the Brontë legend.
3. Devotion a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.
ACHIEVEMENTS 1. In 1994 Jane Eyre was the 7th most borrowed classic from a library (I bet you didn't know that!) Jane was the first plain heroine in English literature.
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause.
WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author
BIRTH April 21, 1816 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.
FAMILY BACKGROUND Charlotte was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish Mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Charlotte had four sisters including Emily (1818-1848) who wrote Wuthering Heights and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . She acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters." Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.
CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. Over the next ten years, she filled thousands of pages of miniature books imagining and chronicling the fantastic world of Angria.
EDUCATION In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Charlotte's father removed her and Emily from the school. I'm told the Clergy Daughters' School still exists, though it was moved to Casterton shortly after the scandal.
Afterwards their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by her. In 1831 14-year-old Charlotte became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, but left the following year to teach her sisters at home.
CAREER RECORD Charlotte took up various positions as governesses & teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for their brother Branwell. Her CV reads thus:
1835-8 A teacher at her old school at Roe Head.
1839 A governess with Sidgwick family near Skipton
1841 A governess with a family at Rawdon
1842-43 Studied languages and school management at Brussels and taught at a boarding school, the Pensionnat Héger, in the hope of returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Charlotte set up with Emily a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Charlotte's first novel, Jane Eyre was published.
1850s Charlotte cared for her aged father.
APPEARANCE Charlotte was a wee slip of a girl with brown hair, a square heavily featured face, bad complexion, fine eyes and spectacles. GH Lewis, (George Eliot's lover) described Charlotte as "a little plain, provincial, sickly looking old maid." She was very self-conscious about her teeth and never smiled with her mouth open. .
CHARACTER When at home, Charlotte was a saintly drudge, a long suffering victim of duty, but away a passionate, manipulative, dynamic, emotional rebellious lady who was criticised as being un-befitting a clergyman's daughter. By Gum they were a sensitive lot up there.
RELATIONSHIPS For years Charlotte thought she was too plain to marry and was consequently eloquent about the loneliness of a single woman. She fell in love several times herself including one Monsieur Héger, a choleric, small professor of logic whom she met whilst teaching in Belgium. When she returned to Haworth she continued to correspond with him, despite the fact he was married already, until he ceased the letters. Charlotte was heartbroken.
However, all was not lost. Charlotte actually received four proposals of marriage before, on 29th June 1854, she married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Nicholls after initial violent objections from her dad. Charlotte wore a white muslin wedding dress with delicate green embroidery and a lace trimmed bonnet. It was said she looked like a "snowdrop".
Arthur was faithful, pleasant ans indomitable and Charlotte at first merely admired but later grew to love her hubby. He did not share their intellectual interests but made her happy. They had nine months of an increasingly happy marriage as Charlotte found joy in domestic love. But in March 1855 Charlotte died.
The extroverted Charlotte had many friends including her future biographer, Mrs Gaskell.
MONEY AND FAME Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, William Makepiece Thackery was especially keen. Within a few years Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth. An American bought up part of Charlotte’s discarded sash window & carried it on his back to Keighley station.
The frenchified Brontë (with the accent over the "E") was Arthur Nicholls idea.
FOOD AND DRINK Charlotte and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.
LITERATURE After leaving school, Charlotte and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. Charlotte used the pseudynomn "Currer Bell" when she published her first two novels.
Charlotte was the first to try to get something published, a small book of poems written by her, Emily & Anne under the names Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell (named thus so as not to reveal their gender). Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, Charlotte, The Professor, which only came out posthumously in 1857, Emily, Wuthering Heights and Anne, Agnes Grey, which were both accepted. The disappointed Charlotte quickly raced off Jane Eyre, which actually got published before her sister's novels.
In case you don't know, Jane Eyre is about an orphan girl who grew up to become a governess in a mysterious neighbourhood. The first half was written whilst Charlotte nursed her father through the aftermath of a dangerous eye operation in a hotel. The plucky, plain downtrodden Jane was partly based on Charlotte's own experiences and Rochester supposedly on Lord Byron. The Morton to which Jane fled from Thornfield Hall corresponds to the village of Hathersage in the Peak District. The deserted Wycollier Hall on Brontë Way was Jane Eyre's Ferndean Manor. Lowood School was based on Cowan Bridge School.
Other novels were:
1849 Shirley The heroine was based on Emily
1853 Villette, which was written as a result of Charlotte's heartbreak over Monsieur Héger.
Charlotte left several unfinished novels when she died including Emma, which was eventually finished and published in 1980 by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady.",
PETS After Branwell, then Emily, and then Anne died within months of each other, Emily's dog Keeper and Anne's dog Flossey provided Charlotte some solace in her grief.
HOBBIES AND SPORTS Charlotte and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.
PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY The saintly, long-suffering Charlotte Brontë was an Anglican feminist and a passionate anti-Catholic who had been influenced by her Wesleyan family background with its belief that only complete adherence to God’s will brings salvation. These themes stand out in her Jane Eyre, where only after the brooding romantic Mr Rochester’s blindness, like St Paul, and his subsequent repentance to God can the book's heroine and Rochester be bought together.
Politically a Tory, Charlotte preached tolerance rather than revolution. Despite her shyness in company, she was always prepared to argue her beliefs.
SCANDAL The extent of Charlotte Brontë's feelings for Monsieur Héger were not fully realised until 1913, when her letters to him were published for the first time. These letters, referred to as the 'Héger Letters', had been ripped up at some stage by Héger, but his wife had retrieved the pieces from the wastepaper bin and had meticulously sewn them back together.
HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS The sickly Charlotte believed her time at the poorly run Cowan Bridge School, where two of her sisters both died of consumption permanently ruined her health.
HOMES
Until 1820 Charlotte lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Charlotte and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s. TRAVEL A favorite walk of the sisters lead for two miles west to the Brontë waterfall, by no means Niagara size, just a mere trickle. Charlotte came here to mourn the loss of her sisters.
In view of the enormous success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her publisher to occasionally visit London, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not like to leave her ageing father's side.
In 1851 Charlotte visited the Great Exhibition in London and attended lectures by Thackery. The same year she also journeyed to the Lake District and Scotland and Manchester
DEATH Charlotte found she was pregnant not long after her marriage, and it was felt she would have a difficult pregnancy due to previous ill-health. Despite this, her husband insisted on her accompanying him to visiting the Brontë waterfall in the rain. The ground underneath was extremely damp and Charlotte caught a chill, leading to pneumonia. She died on 31 March 1855 at Haworth House & are buried at St Michael’s Church there.
APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Loads of TV and movie versions of Jane Eyre including one in 1943 where Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles starred as those famous fictional Brits, Jane Eyre & Rochester. In 1970 the lovely Susannah York played the supposedly plain Jane and George C "Patton" Scott, Rochester. There was also a 2006 BBC version, starring Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, which you can see below.
2. Mrs Gaskill's Life of Charlotte (1857), is one of the classic biographies, and helped promote the Brontë legend.
3. Devotion a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.
ACHIEVEMENTS 1. In 1994 Jane Eyre was the 7th most borrowed classic from a library (I bet you didn't know that!) Jane was the first plain heroine in English literature.
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause.
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