No visit to Yorkshire would be complete without a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth, to learn about three literary sisters; Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. How did three sisters, daughters of a country clergyman, grow up to produce some of the most powerful and dramatic novels in the English language?
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë were the authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre (1847), Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847), and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) were written in this house over a hundred and fifty years ago, yet their power still moves readers today.
To find two writers of genius in one family would be rare, but to find several writers in one household is unique in the history of literature. Charlotte and Emily are ranked among the world’s greatest novelists; Anne is a powerful underrated author, and both their father, the Revd. Patrick Brontë, and brother Branwell also saw their own works in print.
The Brontës, published under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, were acknowledged at the time for their directness and powerful emotional energy, qualities which were sometimes interpreted by the critics as ‘coarse’ and ‘brutal’.
About Haworth
The Pennine village where the Bronte sisters grew up was then a crowded industrial town, polluted, smelly and wretchedly unhygienic. Although perched on the edge of open country, high up on the edge of Haworth Moor, the death rate was as high as anything in London or Bradford, with 41 per cent of children failing even to reach their sixth birthday. The average age of death was just 24.
Villagers typically subsistence farmed a few acres, often ‘take-in’ from the moors, which they combined with hand-loom weaving or wool-combing. But worsted weaving on a loom in your front room was already on its way out by the time the Bronte family arrived in the village in 1821; new water-powered mills began appearing along the River Worth from 1790, and the economy began shifting from domestic to industrial.
When they had spare time people tended to devote it to religious worship. Baptist and Wesleyan chapels flourished in the village, and together with the Anglican church, provided the village with education and a social life.
Haworth Parsonage, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, was their home from 1820 to 1861.
About the Brontë Society
Founded in 1893, and one of the world’s oldest, most respected literary societies, the Brontë Society is still preserving Brontë items today, growing the collection and teaching visitors about the lives and works of the three famous sisters.
The first Museum opened in 1895 above the Yorkshire Penny Bank on Haworth Main Street. The Society began to purchase Brontë treasures at auction, and many others were loaned or donated. By the following summer 10,000 visitors had passed through.
In 1928 the Church put up for sale Haworth Parsonage at a price of £3000, and it was bought by Sir James Roberts, a Haworth-born wool merchant and lifetime Brontë Society member, who handed the Society the deeds. It was, of course, the perfect home for their collection.
The wealthy Philadelphia publisher Henry Houston Bonnell bequeathed to the Society his extensive collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters, first editions and personal effects, which arrived at the Museum upon his sudden death in 1926. From then on the Museum could boast the world’s largest collection of Brontëana, and many subsequent bequests allowed them to bid successfully for Brontë items coming up for sale at auction.
The Brontë collections at the Brontë Parsonage Museum are the largest and most important in the world and continue to inspire scholars, writers and artists. The Contemporary Arts Programme includes literary events, exhibitions, artistic responses, a competition and festivals, and its lifelong learning programme enables it to reach students of all ages across the country.
Information in this article is from the Brontë Parsonage Museum website.
Click here to visit the the Brontë Parsonage Museum: https://www.bronte.org.uk/
Click here to join the Brontë Society: http://members.bronte.org.uk/Join-Online