Reading Challenge 2022: The Results

As we're so close to welcoming in 2023 and I'm unlikely to finish any more books between now and then I thought I'd provide the results of my 2022 Reading Challenge. At the start of the year, I set myself a challenge of reading 20 books I hadn't previously read and some individual tasks. Currently,…

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A Tale of Two Glass Towns – Pre-Order Now!

Reader, I'm delighted to announce that my debut novel, A Tale of Two Glass Towns is now available to pre-order on Olympia Publisher's website and is due for release on 26/01/2023! Synopsis In 1999, seven-year-old Theo has been uprooted to live with his grandparents at the opposite end of the country. As the countdown to…

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë's novels are firmly grounded in reality and the world around her. Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are narratives that forced the 19th-century reader into an uncomfortable examination of their society and their treatment of others, and they have a similar effect on the 21st-century reader. However, in a world (largely) without governesses and servants,…

The Politics of Verdopolis by Branwell Brontë

The Politics of Verdopolis is an 1833 manuscript written by Patrick Branwell Brontë, better known as Branwell Brontë. For many decades, Branwell has been seen predominantly as the ne'er do well, lazy, drunken brother of the Brontë sisters who caused his family much pain, sorrow, and embarrassment. Whilst I don't doubt the latter part of that…

The Poetaster by Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë's satirical short play The Poetaster is one of her earliest contributions to the Glass Town/Angrian saga, and one of the most enjoyable. The Poetaster is one of the famous Brontë tiny books which were produced mainly between the years 1829 and 1830, and which were the results of creative collaborations between Charlotte and her younger brother, Branwell.…

The Search After Happiness by Charlotte Brontë

The Search After Happiness is a short story written by Charlotte Brontë in 1829 when she was thirteen years old. The manuscript is one of the Brontë children’s tiny books, written in mock magazine style, and is now housed in the British Library’s archives. The manuscript contains many errors and revisions, one of the most…

How Important is the Child Writer to the Parent Author?

When we think of the Brontë siblings, we conjure up images of brooding anti-heroes, poor governesses, and wild Yorkshire moors. In short, we tend to think of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey, novels seemingly written by three lonely and isolated sisters in their family home against the backdrop of the harsh environment of northern…

Unearthly Things by Michelle Gagnon

Unearthly Things is a 2017 young adult novel by American author Michelle Gagnon which re-imagines Charlotte Brontë's classic tale, Jane Eyre. The story follows Janie Mason, an orphan who is uprooted from her home in Hawaii and sent to live with the mysterious Rochester family in San Francisco. The mystery of why Janie has been…

The Silver Cup, A Tale by Charlotte Brontë

Reader, it's been a while since my last post looking at the Brontë juvenilia, so let's get back into the swing of things with a look at Charlotte's short story, "The Silver Cup, A Tale." Background and Manuscript The story first appeared in the October 1829 edition of the Brontës' Blackwood's Young Men's Magazine. It…

The Twelve Adventurers and Other Stories: A New Edition

In 1826 a young Charlotte Brontë and her siblings dreamt up their shared fantasy world of Glass Town. The siblings worked on the stories and characters from this world, and later Angria and Gondal, as they grew up. History has not been kind to the Brontë juvenilia with the surviving writings being split up across…