Review: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, Rachel Cantor (2023)

You might be surprised that my review of Rachel Cantor’s 2023 novel Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, a retelling of the Bronte siblings’ lives, isn’t part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series. After all, those are the blog posts in which I dissect works of fiction written in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. However, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, while it is a book about the Brontes, isn’t set in the nineteenth century at all. 

Instead, the sisters (originally five in number, but, for much of the novel, three) and their brother, whose names are constantly shifting, live not in Victorian Haworth, but in a city apartment building in a near-contemporary era. They navigate corporate jobs, as well as nannying. They interact with their doorman and, early in the book, with child protective services. 

Confused? You may well be for much of the novel. Every chapter takes a different form—e.g., as a script, a letter, a diary paper. The point of view shifts from sibling to sibling and, at each break in the narrative, we are asked to take a plunge into a different reality. Reader, I loved it.

As someone who immersed herself in the lives and works of the Brontes, as I researched and wrote my 2020 novel, Bronte’s Mistress, rarely have I felt so much that a book was written for me. There’s no spoon-feeding of readers here. This is definitely not the book to pick up if you’re learning about the lives of literature’s most famous family for the first time. But if, like me, you’re a Bronte fanatic, who knows the timeline of the siblings lives like the back of your hand, and who’s very familiar with their works and juvenilia, you’re in for a treat. 

What Cantor does so well is capture the closeness within the family and the imaginative childhood play that the Brontes continued well into adulthood. This is a novel about siblings who are obsessed with words and who use them to construct a sort of folie a quatre. And it’s about the conflict that occurs when those who have grown up in a separate world interact with the “real” world. 

I doubt that Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, despite the Brontes’ continued popularity, will reach a wide readership. But I hope that it reaches and delights the right readership.

Have you read the novel? I’d love to hear what you think! Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly emails about the Brontes, my writing and more? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Film Review: Emily (2022)

As the author of a novel inspired by the scandalous lives of the Bronte siblings (Bronte’s Mistress), I’ve fielded a lot of questions recently about Emily, the 2022 biopic about the most mysterious Bronte sister, which only came to theaters in the US last month. Have I seen it? Do I like it? Is it accurate??

In this blog post I’m finally breaking down my response to the movie into two sections—highlights and lowlights. I’d absolutely love to hear your opinions too!

Highlights

Location/Setting: The movie was shot on location, largely in the Brontes’ hometown of Haworth. It was a thrill for me to see the Bronte siblings on film in the parsonage, where they lived, and on the moors where they would have roamed. Emily is beautifully filmed, and the movie would be worth watching for the Yorkshire landscape alone.

Acting: The actors, especially Emma Mackey who played the title role, were stellar (although clearly cast for their talent rather than for any family resemblance between the siblings!).

Boosting Bronte-Mania: Critics and audiences alike seem to have really enjoyed the film, which is great news for Bronte fans (and Bronte-related authors like me). I hope it encourages even more readers to pick up Wuthering Heights and the other Bronte novels.

Lowlights

Romance: I was saddened, although not surprised, that much of the movie was given over to a fictional romance between Emily Bronte and the curate, William Weightman. I understand the film industry’s desire to add bodice ripping to every period drama. However, there was enough scandal in the Brontes’ lives without making more up and I felt the romantic focus took away from who I believe Emily Bronte really was—reclusive, introverted, and not writing from personal experience when she penned the violent passion of Wuthering Heights.

Publication History: The end of the movie was truly horrifying to me, and not because of the Bronte siblings’ speedy deaths. The screenwriters took a huge liberty in changing the publication history of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and suggesting that Charlotte only penned her famous novel in response to Emily’s success.

Charlotte and Anne: Speaking of which, both Charlotte and Anne came out of the Emily biopic particularly badly. While Charlotte’s genius was chalked up to mere sibling rivalry, Anne’s writing aspirations were barely mentioned. I appreciate that this was a movie about Emily, but do we really need to keep putting Bronte sisters down to raise others up?

Sibling Relationships: Branwell, the Bronte brother, also gets a lot of screen time. What was most puzzling to me here was that the movie suggested there was most sympathy and kinship between him and Emily, presenting them as the “fun” ones, compared to an uptight Charlotte and generally useless Anne. In fact, Branwell and Charlotte were incredibly close, as were Emily and Anne—that’s why these were the pairings in which they wrote their juvenilia. There were some early references to the siblings’ childhood make-believe worlds, but this aspect of their relationships was severely underdeveloped in favor of making Emily and Branwell our bad girl/boy rebels.

Lydia Robinson: Finally, as the author of a novel all about Branwell’s affair with Lydia Robinson, his employer’s wife, I was of course intrigued to see how the movie would cover this episode. Sadly, nothing that happened at Thorp Green Hall, or the impact this had on the Bronte family, made it into the movie. Instead, there was just a brief and confusing scene featuring Branwell flirting with a married woman closer to home. Hollywood scouts, if you’re reading this, there was a real Bronte love affair, and one with the scope for multiple sex scenes—you just need to read Bronte’s Mistress. ;)

So, there you have it—this has been my take on Emily. The film is beautiful and well-acted and few of my gripes will matter if you don’t know much about the Brontes. But if you do, you might find yourself screaming at the screen like me… 

Bronte fans, do you agree or disagree? I’d love for you to let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Review: The Grey Woman, Elizabeth Gaskell (1861)

One of the coolest experiences I’ve had since the release of my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, was when I was asked to write an introduction to Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) for a beautiful edition from Canadian publisher Plumleaf Press. The book is part of a trio of lesser-read classics by nineteenth-century women writers in the Plumleaf Vintage series, all with introductions penned by women historical novelists publishing today. 

Along with Anne Bronte’s masterpiece, there’s also Lady Susan by Jane Austen (1794), with a foreword by Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society (2020). And—I was surprised and delighted to find—completing the set is an Elizabeth Gaskell short story/novella I hadn’t read previously, The Grey Woman (1861). 

Molly Greeley, whose The Clergyman’s Wife (2019) I’ve reviewed on this blog, is the introduction writer for this slight but impactful Gothic tale. Expect to find many of the tropes of the genre—a frame narrative insisting on the veracity of the story; a strange house, filled with secrets; and a vulnerable young bride, whose husband is not all he seems. 

But this isn’t just a ripping yarn, or a familiar Victorian fable about the dangers of rushing into a marriage that appears too good to be true. Of most interest to me in the text was the friendship between our protagonist, Anne, and her lady’s companion, Amante. There are clear lesbian overtones to their relationship—from Amante’s name to her cross-dressing to (spoiler alert) a section where the two are cohabiting and even coparenting. The biggest disappointment of the piece is the “off-stage” conclusion of Amante’s story, though many readers will conclude what Gaskell only suggests—that Anne turns grey less from fear of her murderous husband than from grief at the loss of her female lover.

If you’re studying Gaskell and gender or looking for nineteenth-century fiction with a LGBTQ+ subtext, The Grey Woman is well-worth adding to your reading list. And for general readers? If you’re laboring under any misconception that Victorians all blushed at the sight of table legs, this novella is an entertaining antidote.

Which lesser-known nineteenth-century novel would you like me to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Review: Walking the Invisible, Michael Stewart (2021)

I was working at digital media company Refinery29 when I first encountered Michael Stewart. The ARC (advance reader copy) of his 2018 novel, Ill Will, was up for grabs on the freebies table. Mixed in with other books, as well as lipsticks and leggings, sent to our editorial team, Ill Will caught my eye. It was the subtitle which captured my attention: The Untold Story of Heathcliff. Not only was I a Brontëphile, with a Master’s in nineteenth-century literature, but I was also in the midst of writing my own Brontë-inspired novel—the book that would become Brontë’s Mistress (2020). 

By the time I read Stewart’s novel in January 2019 (and reviewed it for this blog of course!), I had an agent, but no book deal. By 2020, my novel was being released in the midst of a global pandemic. One silver lining was that the uptick in virtual book events meant writers could now straddle the Atlantic. Soon, Michael and I were appearing at multiple events together, along with other Brontë-related writers. We helped raise money for the Brontë Parsonage Museum by speaking at the Brontë 2020 conference. We spoke together at the Historical Novel Society North America’s conference too. And in 2021, Michael chatted to me on Instagram Live, while trespassing somewhere in the English countryside. It was very on brand. 

Of course, then (although Michael and I are yet to meet in real life!), I was excited to read his latest (non-fiction) book, Walking the Invisible, which was published last year. Part memoir, part history book, part hiking guide, Walking the Invisible is hard to categorize. It’s a book born out of Stewart’s love of nature and the Brontës, and as much about our century as it is about the nineteenth. He doesn’t shy away from talking about the social challenges and changes facing many of the towns, big and small, the Brontës lived in, and moves between education, political commentary, and personal anecdote seamlessly.

The book makes you want to walk in Stewart’s (and the Brontës’!) footsteps and I can’t wait to visit Yorkshire again with the volume in hand. I especially loved reading about the genesis of the Brontë Stones project—a group of stones with poems honoring the sisters, which walkers can visit in the Thornton/Haworth area—and about the wide range of personalities whom Stewart has encountered due to their voracious love of the Brontës. He doesn’t offer a definitive answer as to why so many of us continue to be fascinated by one of literature’s most famous families, but his book will be a valuable artifact speaking to the early twenty-first-century version of the Brontë Myth (one which owes more to Kate Bush than to academia).

My only (small!) gripe was with Stewart’s reference to Edmund Robinson (husband to Lydia Robinson—the mistress of my novel’s title). He includes an often repeated but false rumor that Lydia Robinson’s husband was old and decrepit, encouraging her to take solace in Branwell Brontë’s arms. In fact, Edmund was a year Lydia’s junior. 

Overall, I highly recommend Walking the Invisible. It would make a great gift for Brontë fans, and I can see this one flying off the shelves at the parsonage bookstore for years to come.

What book(s) would you like to see me review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. And if you haven’t already, check out my novel Brontë’s Mistress, for more Brontë scandal.

VIDEO: Brontë2020 - The Brontës, The Twenty-First Century and Us w/ Finola Austin, Julie Cohen, Rowan Coleman, Nikita Gill, Syrie James, Lucy Powrie and Sarah Shoemaker

 

September Articles by Finola Austin, Author of Bronte’s Mistress

For the last few months, thanks to the release of my first novel, Bronte’s Mistress, I’ve been cheating on my Secret Victorianist blog by writing articles for other bigger (though less cool 😉) publications. 

August was wild with nine personal essays going live in Oprah Magazine, LitHub, Women Writers, Women[‘s] Books, Frolic, Historia Mag, Off the Shelf, Bronte Blog, English Historical Fiction Writers and Silver Petticoat Review. By contrast, September was much calmer, but I’m really proud of the four essays I had published and excited to (re-)share them with you today!

First up, I wrote about the real love affair that inspired my novel for both the Irish Times and Town and Country magazine. 

In Town and Country, I talked about my attempt to “capture something of the passion of Charlotte, the social commentary of Anne and the darkness of Emily, in shedding light on this scandalous true story,” and highlighted the things that the Bronte siblings and I do and don’t have in common. 

In the Irish Times, I mentioned the Brontes’ Irish and Cornish roots and shared my excitement at finding, “another chapter of this saga…the history of Lydia Robinson, the older woman blamed for their brother Branwell’s early demise.”

The Brontes were also my subject for a piece for Refinery29, which had a pretty different focus. I talked about the afterlife the Bronte sisters have enjoyed as our archetype for the successful woman writer—poor, plain and virginal—and argued that women need more varied models for dedicating their lives to art. 

Finally, I wrote a more technical piece for Almost An Author, on what fellow writers should consider when writing fiction in the first person. Charlotte Bronte’s line “Reader, I married him” may be one of the most famous in English literature, but what does it mean to adopt the “I” of a fictional character? And what are the traps writers can fall into here?

I hope you enjoy these pieces and my other essays from earlier in the year. If you’ve already read and enjoyed Bronte’s Mistress, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon. And, if your book club wants to read my book, I’d absolutely love to join your meeting via Zoom. Download the Bronte’s Mistress reading group guide here and contact me via my website. Alternatively, get in touch via Facebook or Instagram or by tweeting @SVictorianist.  

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August Articles by Finola Austin, Author of Bronte’s Mistress

Wow. August was such a month that we’re now midway through September and I still haven’t recovered! Thank you so much to those of you who made the release of Bronte’s Mistress so special. Haven’t ordered your copy yet? There’s a list of places you can buy the book here (please note, for those of you in the UK, Waterstones is your best bet for speedy delivery…thanks, Covid). 

I’ve previously run roundups of the February/March, April/May, June/July articles featuring Bronte’s Mistress. But in August so much happened that I’m divvying up the content into three posts. In this first, I’ll list the articles I wrote that were published during release month. In the second, I’ll share the Q&As and interviews I did, which included some great questions! And, in a third blog post, I’ll detail some of the wonderful articles and reviews penned by others.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

The article I was most proud of getting published last month was a piece for Women Writers, Women[‘s] Books on “How Writing My First Novel Prepared Me To Write My Debut Novel.” While the release of my first book was a huge moment of celebration, I’ve been rejected many times along my writing journey. I was so pleased with the positive response I received when I shared this story with others. If you’re a writer who’s aiming for publication, know that it does happen. You don’t need connections. You can get an agent from cold querying. You can pick yourself up and write another book.

I was also pleased to have two of my articles land in MAJOR publications. I wrote an essay, “Was The Graduate Inspired by a Bronte Family Scandal?” for LitHub (one of my favourite websites), following the death of Charles Webb, author of The Graduate. And I wrote about the inspiration for my book for Oprah Magazine (!) in “This New Novel Explores the Secret Lives of the Other Two Bronte Siblings.”

I also courted controversy in a piece for Frolic on “What I Learned Writing About One Of History’s ‘Bad Feminists’.” I talked Bronte scandal with Historia Mag in “The Bronte Affair: researching the scandal that enveloped literature’s most famous family.” And I shared “6 Tender Stories of Forbidden Love” with Off the Shelf, showcasing some of my favourite reads when it comes to taboo romance.

I was also a guest blogger for three of my favourite blogs as part of the Bronte’s Mistress Blog Tour. I shared “10 fascinating facts I learned about the Brontes while researching Bronte's Mistress” with Bronte Blog (home of all things Brontes online). And, while we can’t travel right now, I gave readers a glimpse into my research trip to Yorkshire in “The Villages of Great and Little Ouseburn—the Forgotten Stops on the Bronte Trail,” for English Historical Fiction Writers. Finally, I was a guest for a day on the Silver Petticoat Review, writing a piece on “The Brontes and the Victorian Mrs Robinson.”

Writing and publishing these personal essays has been hard work, but it’s also been very rewarding. With each one, I’ve considered something new about Bronte’s Mistress and what my novel means to me. I dreamed of writing pieces like this when my novel existed only in my head. Thank you all for reading them!

Do you have a book club that would love to read Bronte’s Mistress? If so, I’d love to join your meeting via Zoom! Download the Bronte’s Mistress reading group guide and contact me via my website. Alternatively, get in touch via Facebook or Instagram or by tweeting @SVictorianist. 

VIDEO: The Brontes vs. Jane Austen w/ Natalie Jenner at Wellington Square Bookshop

 

How Victorian Gothic is still inspiring writers today: a conversation with C.G. Twiles, author of The Best Man on the Planet

I can hardly believe it. The launch of my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, is now only a month away! The book, as the title might suggest, is a work of historical fiction, inspired by the lives and works of the Bronte family. It’s based on a true episode in the great literary family’s history, and three of the four siblings who reached adulthood are major characters in my novel.

 

But there’s another important way in which the novels of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne continue to impact writers and bookshelves today. They are pivotal to our understanding of the Gothic genre.

 

I recently chatted to C.G. Twiles, author of The Best Man on the Planet, which the writer describes as a ‘modern Gothic romantic thriller’. I wanted to know what Gothic means today, and how the Brontes can help us understand our more modern ideas of romance and suspense.

Austin:

Thanks for chatting with me today about Gothic fiction and The Best Man on the Planet! What inspired you to write the book?

 

Twiles:

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I read it when I was 21, and, ever since then, I’ve wanted to write something similar.

 

The Best Man on the Planet isn’t a retelling, but more of an inspired update. After all, it was hard to think of a really dark secret that my ‘Mr Rochester’ (in my novel, Mr Foster) could have that would shock people these days. We’ve heard it all at this point. My title is ironic, much like The Great Gatsby. I was also tired of thrillers with the word ‘Girl’ in the title, so I came up with one that had ‘Man’.

 

I have a lot of other interests, like true crime and psychology, which I wrote about for years, and so these themes also ended up weaving their way in. And I’ve always wanted to write a big soul-mance romance. So I put all that into one book. A modern Gothic romantic thriller was the result.

 

Austin:

How would you define Gothic fiction in particular?

 

Twiles:

For me, a house that has a sinister vibe is key to a Gothic novel. It can be a mansion, a castle, an urban apartment, or a double wide, but the dwelling is a witness to all the drama, virtually another character.

 

And then there’s often a Byronic hero, which of course comes from the poet Lord Byron. A dark, brooding, usually male, character, with some kind of torturous past that punishes his present.

 

But I would argue that while Gothic fiction often centres on the tortured psyche of the male, it is really about the psyche of the female, and how she deals with it. I look at it as the male being the dark part of her psyche.

 

There are exceptions of course—in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the woman is the Byronic hero. And I haven’t read your book, Bronte’s Mistress, yet, but I’m imagining that in your novel, both Branwell and Lydia are Byronic: Branwell tortured by drink and a sense of failure, Lydia by her boring marriage and constraints of her class and era. Am I right?!

 

Austin:

No spoilers here but you may well be onto something…

 

I find a lot of your answer really interesting, especially what you said about the central role of the Gothic house. One of the things that stood out to me when reading The Best Man on the Planet was the Gothic mansion in Brooklyn that your main character, Casey, finds herself working at. How did you go about characterizing the house? Is it a real mansion?

 

Twiles:

It is real! It’s a members-only club, called The Montauk Club, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I basically described it to a T. While I was writing the book, a member allowed me inside (and bought me dinner—thank you!). You can read more about The Montauk Club on my website, www.cgtwiles.com. I hope it will survive the pandemic given that it has currently stopped all events.

 

I suppose mansions are so central to Gothic novels because of the genre’s origins. These books were often focused on the secrets and depravity of the upper classes, and those people lived in castles, estates and mansions.

 

Austin:

Speaking of the genre’s origins, do you have any favourite Gothic reads, whether classic or modern, you’d recommend?

 

Twiles:

I love anything by the Brontes. I also like middle-of-the road Gothic authors, like Dorothy Eden, and Ira Levin, who wrote Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives. In Levin’s stories, there are often sinister homes and strong heroines under duress. I was really into V.C. Andrews as a kid and read all the Dollanganger series, but I tried to reread it recently and couldn’t get into it.

 

Austin:

And any favourite, or least favourite, Gothic tropes? Which can readers expect to find in your novel?

 

Twiles:

In The Best Man on the Planet, there’s crime, there’s love and sex (though not explicit), there’s a house that basically comes alive.

 

A couple of things I also did that aren’t common now in thrillers but were in Gothic fiction back in the day: I have a heroine with a strong moral centre; she is not an unreliable narrator. There’s a sense of humour threaded throughout. The Brontes were great, dry wits, and you don’t see much of that these days in thrillers; they’re all so serious from the first paragraph. But I’m not capable of writing without some humour.

 

I’m not a huge fan of the dark and stormy night trope. Charlotte Bronte made beautiful use of a storm sweeping in and splitting the huge oak tree after Rochester’s proposal to Jane, but I don’t think that can be topped, so I tend to stay away from storms. It just seems a cheap, easy way to try to get a thrill. How much more challenging is it to create a sense of dread under a clear, sunny sky?

 

Austin:

Did you also find it challenging to deal with some of the digital realities of our lives today, when writing a Gothic with a contemporary setting?

 

Twiles:

Yes. It’s hard to give characters modern technology (cell phones, texts, emails and social media), and still manage to have the staples of suspense – like characters who can’t reach each other. If you think of that great scene in Jane Eyre where she and Rochester communicate telepathically, now they’d just text each other. Not as exciting! I kept making things happen and then realising it probably wouldn’t happen that way if there was a cell phone, so I went to elaborate lengths to get rid of modern technology.

 

Austin:

What about our modern views on psychology? We’ve come along way in our understanding of the psyche since the 1840s!

 

Twiles:

I took the more up-to-date approach that our biology and brain wiring plays a huge role in our development, more than what our mother might have done to us at age five!

 

In the world I created in my novel, the brain scan has much more importance than the subconscious. I wanted to ask the question about the role our brains play in who we are—you hear about people who have a stroke and they are suddenly a completely different person! There are people who came out of strokes speaking with foreign accents, or whose sexual orientation changed, or who suddenly became math or musical geniuses.

 

So I wanted to explore that rather than the deep buried memory thing that so many thrillers are exploring. Who are we really? In the book, Mr. Foster has had a brain aneurysm that burst. He wakes up completely changed. Is he now responsible for the actions of the man he was before?

 

Austin:

People will have to read your book to find out! Thank you so much for chatting for my blog and best of luck with The Best Man on the Planet.

 

Twiles:

It was my pleasure.

 

 

The Best Man on the Planet is available for purchase on Amazon now. Find C.G. Twiles online, on Facebook, on Instagram, or on Twitter.

 

Bronte’s Mistress is available for pre-order, in hardcover, e-book and audiobook, now, and will be published August 4. Click here to attend my virtual launch event with Strand Book Store NYC on August 3, wherever you are in the world. Want to stay in touch? Sign up to my email newsletter below, or connect with me via Facebook or Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: The Vanished Bride, Bella Ellis (2019)

It’s now a little over a month until my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, meets the world, and, between articles, podcasts and planned events, I’m currently living and breathing the Bronte sisters. Still, this did nothing to dissuade me from reading the latest book in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, which introduces us to the Bronte siblings as we’ve never seen them before.

The Vanished Bride, by Rowan Coleman (writing under the suitably Bronte-esque pseudonym Bella Ellis), came out in Fall 2019. It’s an historical mystery starring everyone’s favourite literary family as unlikely sleuths (or, as they call themselves, ‘detectors’).

The chapters alternate between Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s perspectives, as the trio (occasionally with an inebriated Branwell in tow) tries to discover what happened to a young bride whose bedroom has been found empty, but awash with blood.

The mystery is well-paced if straightforward, but the real fun of the novel comes in the sisters’ different personalities (Emily is perhaps best-drawn), and in how Ellis includes references to the sisters’ novels, suggesting that the events of the book might have inspired the siblings’ literary creations. There are governesses and ghosts, a devastating fire, and even a first wife confined to the attic.

The novel is set in 1845, just after Branwell’s dismissal and Anne’s resignation from Thorp Green Hall (major events in Bronte’ Mistress), so it was particularly enjoyable for me to see how Ellis incorporates known events in the Brontes’ lives to make their detecting feel possible in this period. The novel is also clearly marketed as the first in a series, so I appreciated the brief references to Arthur Nicholls, the man who would become Charlotte’s husband, and look forward to seeing how this relationship develops over the course of later books.

All in, this one’s definitely for fans of historical mysteries (if you don’t enjoy detective stories even the Brontes might not be enough of an inducement). Of the Bronte-related books I’ve reviewed recently, Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte offers realism, and Michael Stewart’s Ill Will grit, but Ellis’s novel is certainly the most playful.

Know of more Bronte-inspired novels? Let me know and I may include them in my Neo-Victorian Voices series. Leave a comment below, contact me via Instagram or Facebook, or tweet @SVictorianist.

 

If you’re a lover of all things Bronte, be sure to check out my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, which is available for pre-order now. The book tells the story of the scandalous affair that overshadowed Branwell and Anne’s employment at Thorp Green Hall, through the voice of the “profligate woman” accused of tempting the Bronte brother into sin.

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TV Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996)

I’m a huge lover of all things related to the Brontes. In fact, my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, which comes out in under two months (!), prominently features several members of literature’s most famous family. However, somehow it still took a pandemic in the year of Anne Bronte’s bicentenary to make me wonder if either of her novels had been adapted for film.

Turning to IMBD, I discovered that Anne, the youngest of the three novel-writing sisters, had been overlooked on the big screen, as much as elsewhere. There are a slew of adaptations of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights, but Anne’s Agnes Grey and Charlotte’s other novels have yet to been given the Hollywood treatment. There is just one lone TV adaptation of Anne’s second, more controversial, novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This was made by the BBC in 1996. Thankfully for those of us in quarantine, it’s currently available via Amazon Prime Video.

The miniseries, which is three episodes long, was directed by Mike Barker and stars Tara Fitzgerald as runaway wife Helen Graham, Rupert Graves as her abusive husband, and Toby Stephens as Gilbert Markham, the farmer who falls for the mysterious “widow” renting nearby mansion Wildfell Hall.

I was initially sceptical about how the book would translate to film, comprised as the novel is of letters and a diary but, reader, I loved it.

There are minor plot alterations, especially related to the more streamlined cast of secondary characters, but the TV adaptation remains true to the spirit of Anne’s novel. We are closer to Gilbert’s perspective in the first and third episodes, but, when he is handed Helen’s diary, it is her voice that details her unhappy marriage.

The adaptation also does a great job of editing down some of Anne’s most didactic passages, leaving us with the best of Helen as she begs her husband to prepare for heaven, or argues that boys should be protected from vice as much as girls, directly calling out gendered double standards in Victorian childrearing.

I especially enjoyed the shots of the Yorkshire landscape and the original soundtrack (composed by Richard G. Mitchell). The Tenant of Wildfell Hall certainly has its dramatic moments but, as in Agnes Grey, Anne favours a quieter romance, and the music and setting enhanced this. Charlotte found her youngest sister’s second novel shocking because of its depictions of alcoholism and debauchery, but today we might look at the book as a heart-warming second chance romance.

If you’re a lover of costume dramas, consider checking out this lesser known adaptation. I hope that eventually Anne’s Agnes Grey makes it onto our screens (and Bronte’s Mistress, of course!).

Bronte’s Mistress is available for pre-order now. Order today and you’ll have it in your hands on release day in August. And join my mailing list for updates on events and more.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, Syrie James (2009)

With my own Bronte-inspired novel, Bronte’s Mistress, coming out in just (!) three months (August 2020) from Atria Books, I was so excited to read the next novel in my Neo-Victorian Voices series—Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte (2009).

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, Syrie James (2009)

James’s novel may be titled a diary, but it reads more like a memoir—a novelisation of Charlotte Bronte’s life as she herself might have written it. Charlotte’s relationship with her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, is at the heart of the novel’s dramatic arc, but all the most compelling stories that make up the Bronte myth are here—from the early losses of two sisters and a mother that marred the Bronte siblings’ childhoods, to Charlotte’s time in Brussels, which formed the inspiration for much of her published work.

James does a wonderful job of interweaving fact and conjecture, and in bringing the Bronte household in Haworth to life. She always makes us aware of the limited space within the parsonage and the resulting difficulties of keeping anything secret between the adult siblings.

Reverend Bronte, the Brontes’ father, doesn’t come out of the story well. Otherwise, most characters are painted in accordance with Elizabeth Gaskell’s sensational Bronte biography, which makes a lot of sense, given her relationship was primarily with Charlotte. Emily loves the moors and is most comfortable with her dog, eschewing all other company. Anne is shy and religious. Branwell is a raving drunk, despite the promise of his youth.

It’s Charlotte herself whom, appropriately, we come to understand on a deeper level. I loved how James created a character with the perfect blend of outward awkwardness and internal passion. The book’s central romance raised a fascinating question: how could any real love even hope to compete with Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester in Charlotte’s eyes?

I think the novel would serve as a wonderful introduction to the lives of the Brontes, since the story cleaves so closely to the historical record. For those well versed in the Brontes’ works, the joy of reading the book comes in playing “spotting the sources” for the ideas, and sometimes passages, inspired by the sisters’ famous novels—and, of course, in getting access to Charlotte’s secrets as never before.

Which novel would you like the Secret Victorianist to review next in my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Plus, big news, if you’re signed up to my email newsletter already, or if you sign up this month (May 2020) using the link below, you’ll be in with a shot of winning one of two advance reader copies of Bronte’s Mistress, prior to its publication! My novel gives voice to Lydia Robinson, the older, married woman, who had an affair with Branwell Bronte, and offers a new perspective on English literature’s most famous family. Sign up below!

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Review: The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick, Sharon Wright (2019)

Three sisters living at the edge of a Yorkshire moor, with their widowed father and troubled brother—this is the legend we’re used to hearing about the Brontës. But in her wonderful recent biography, The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick, Sharon Wright shines a light on that other member of the family—the mother, who gave Branwell Brontë (the Brontë sibling most central to my forthcoming novel) his name.

Maria Branwell, who was, from 1812 until her early death in 1821, Mrs Brontë, has always been a shadowy figure. Anne Brontë, the youngest of the famous siblings, had no memory of her. Charlotte, Branwell, and Emily were, respectively, five, four, and three at her death. But here she comes to life, as does her sprawling, successful family, enterprising business people from bustling Cornish Penzance.

In the early chapters of her biography, Wright charts the fortunes of the Branwell family (who shared with Patrick Brontë an unfortunate habit of frequently changing the spelling of their last name). Later, our focus is more securely on Maria—on her move from Cornwall to Yorkshire, her whirlwind romance with the Reverend Brontë, and her life as a young wife, giving birth to six children within seven years.

I rate my knowledge of the Brontës pretty highly (I did a LOT of research into the family, especially Branwell and Anne, for my novel, Brontë’s Mistress), but the biography still taught me lots I didn’t know. I’d never, for instance, spent time with Maria’s surviving letters (published here in full in the appendix), or realised that she had writing aspirations of her own, even as she went through multiple pregnancies in quick succession.

More than anything the book left me with an impression of how connected the Brontës were—to a large family of Cornish relatives, and to middle class society in Thornton, where the young couple set up their first family home. Our prevailing view of the Brontës is often one centred on isolation. The Brontë parsonage, sited as it is at the edge of Haworth, gives us the impression of the family as having existed on the outskirts of the world.

There’s a romance to isolation that many of us might have believed in (at least until the last few weeks). The Brontës’ physical distance from the (publishing) world and their motherlessness are both factors that have contributed to the establishment of the Brontë myth. But Maria existed, and her influence on her children—on their friendships, reading taste, and personalities—seems to have extended long after her death.

If you, like me, love the Brontës, I’d highly recommend checking out Sharon Wright’s book. And if you’re a reader of fiction, as well as non-fiction, you might want to read more about my novel, Brontë’s Mistress, here.