Bronte Siblings: FITE!

Happy Anne-Day

http://forbookssake.net/2014/01/17/bookish-birthdays-anne-bronte/

Do we blame Charlotte for making Anne's work less known - as a result of her temporarily blocking further editions of Anne's second novel, leading to a mangled edition being widely read for decades ?

Not that she's to blame for the mangled editition, Thomas Hodgson is, but that probably wouldn't have been the text followed if she didn't block the original in the first place.

Reading the Glass Town/Angria/Gondal writings. Amazing – teenage ultra-high intensity flare outs of gothic/romantic noise – naive and absurdly over-gifted. Really strange tone coming from public figures/stories inserted into private shared world, w/ rumbling angst beneath. Feel like I need an all brontes, all the time phase.

what are you reading it in? i hesitated over it on two for one oxford classics a while back but wd have had to buy Hume or Locke or the bible or smth to get the full value for money, which made the prospect of getting round to the bronte volume somewhat depressing

yes, the Oxford Classics. Bit steep (given I am generally reading the Brontes in a Delphi Classics kindle edition), but I felt like I hadn't been buying enough books lately.

^ I'm reading the impressive and I think important "Charlotte Brontë - The Imagination in History" by Heather Glen at the moment. It's a bit wordy, but in the opening chapter she posits that the CB juvenilia was sophisticated and has strong ties to her later novels, and

"is not an obsessive return to a private structure of feeling - the insistent "first-person stress" that Raymond Williams found in Brontë's writings - but an imaginative intelligance at work. Theirs is the 'seccentric' viewpoint of history's spectral others - those excluded from official narratives, without effective agency, those who have 'no claim'. The focus in each is on the private experience of a solitary individual, unable to shape or even to understand the world in which she finds herself; the perspective not that of the authoritative, but of the uncomprehending, the situated, embodied gaze. 'I looked up,' says Lord Charles in 'Strange Events','and thick obscurity was before my eyes':'the returning sense of sight came upon me,' says Lucy,'red, as if it swam in blood' (Villette 165). Yet in each there comes also into focus the quite distinctive outline of that which the narrator confronts. And the presence of that looming other, impenetrable or impervious, points, it is beginning to seem, to their author's imaginative concern with a 'most real and substantial' world."

*eccentric

As good a place as any other to mention this in: BBC One announces new drama by award-winning writer Sally Wainwright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/to-walk-invisible?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_press_office&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=corporate

Two hour biopic for BBC. I'm pleased Sally Wainwright is doing it, and super excited in general, but fear I'll be the fanboy nitpicking and whining. The story is almost too perfect for a biopic so if they mess up or leave out some of the very much Hollywood-worthy scenes from real life it'll be frustrating.

Two things I absolutely need to see in this

1 (likely to be included): 'Acton' and 'Currer' revealing themselves to be the Miss Brontës when showing up unannounced at the publisher's, to comical response.*
2 (less likely): Charlotte angrily listing W Makepeace Thackeray's faults to his face as she was ""moved to speak to him of some of his short-comings (literary of course), one by one the faults came into my mind and one by one I brought them out and sought some explanation or defence""

* "When the clerk came with the message to see him, (publisher) Smith sent out to ask for their names which the Brontës declined to give, saying they had come on a private matter. Ever corteous, Smith concealed his impatiance and went out to meet the two "rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking", who were waiting for him. An amused Charlotte later reported their first meeting.

"Did you wish to see me, Ma'am?'
'Is it Mr Smith?', I said, looking up through my spectacles at a young, tall, gentlemanly man.
'It is'.
I then put his own letter into his hand directed to 'Currer Bell'. He looked at it - then me - yet again - I laughed at his queer perplexity - A recognition took place - I gave my real name - 'Miss Brontë' - We were both hurried from the shop into a little back room.. Smith hurried out and returned quickly with one whom he introduced as Mr Williams - a pale, mild, stooping man of fifty - very much like a faded Tom Dixon - Another recognition - long, nervous shaking of hands.. Mr Smith loquacious:
'Allow me to introduce you to my mother and sisters - How long do you stay in Town? You must make the most of the time - to-night you must go to the Italian opera - you must see the Exhibition - Mr Thackeray would be pleased to see you - If Mr Lewes knew 'Currer Bell' was in town - he would have to be shut up - I will ask them both to dinner at my house &c'

Annoyed to discover 200 pages into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that I've been reading a completely abridged edition.