The Brontës and Glass Town Wars (Part 2) - Celia Rees

In a previous post, I described the genesis of my new novel, Glass Town Wars. In that post, I hadn't got much further than the initial idea. All writers know that, no matter how good an idea is, the proof of the pudding is in the writing.  

To re-cap, for those of you who either missed my post or who can't be bothered to click on the link, I'd had an idea for a book which would take a boy from the present and pitch him into the fantasy world of the Brontë siblings, a world which they called The Glass Town Federation and then Angria. I had a device for getting him there and I knew what I wanted to happen (he would meet the young Emily Brontë) but didn't have much beyond that. Crucially, although I knew something of Glass Town, Angria and Emily's later world of Gondal, I had yet to study the juvenilia in any detail. Cowardice on my part. I didn't want to discover that the idea wouldn't work and that I'd have to scrap it, especially as I'd more or less sold it to a publisher. 

I had my set up. So, now it was time to address the juvenilia. The Brontë siblings' early writing is contained in a number of tiny little handmade books (see my post, 18th October). Luckily, these have been collected, deciphered, edited and published in handy volumes, like Christine Alexander's Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal.  

     

I began to read and found a world that was precociously brilliant, brimming with creative exuberance and dazzling, instinctive, natural talent: fascinating, elaborate, complex - and completely crazy. The Brontë siblings wrote from childhood into adolescence and young adulthood and they wrote a lot. They drew on anything and everything to make the worlds they were creating: current newspaper stories, events local and historical; they filched wholesale from writers they admired and liberally incorporated stories that they had heard: local legends and folk stories, fairies, ghosts, ghouls and witches. They peopled the world with whoever they wanted in it: dukes and duchesses, friendless young women and cigar smoking gentlemen, pirates, low life thugs and body snatchers, doctors, journalists and printers. Everything, anything, they wanted to happen, happened. One of their earliest inventions were the mile high Genii who could build cities in the middle of no-where, preside over the rise and fall of empires – the Genii, of course, were the Brontës themselves. 

Branwell's Map of Glass Town Federation and Angria 

They founded their world at the mouth of the River Niger in Africa with Glass Town as its capital, yet less than a day's ride away, Parrysland (Emily's territory) was suspiciously like Yorkshire, Rossland (Anne's territory) was like Scotland because they admired the work of Sir Walter Scott. And so on. Across their world, wars raged, revolutions erupted and were suppressed, characters were killed off and resurrected, love affairs conducted, marriage vows made and broken. All of this was written, not in story form but in reports, articles, announcements, poems and advertisements in tiny volumes that are really magazines and newspapers, written for, about and by the citizens of Glass Town. The whole complex fantasy grew from a box of wooden soldiers given to Branwell on his ninth birthday. The size of the miniature publications had been carefully calculated by him so that they were the correct dimensions for the original wooden soldiers. The body of writing changed as the siblings grew older but the books containing it were always small, the writing always tiny because this was a secret world. They were writing for themselves, not for anyone else. 

I found much to admire. I particularly loved the different forms their writing took but the anarchic nature of much of it meant the fantasy world lacked any kind of cohesion, internal logic, or discipline. They were children, writing like all children do, without hindrance and constraint, simply writing about what they wanted to write about, what they wanted to happen, as children might write fan fiction now. They were writing to please themselves, not an external reader. All young writers tend to have this is common and this way of writing often continues on through adolescence to young adulthood as it did with the Brontës, although that is probably the subject of a different blog.

 Page from Branwell's notebook

I admit to being a bit foxed. Even in fantasy there has to be internal logic within a story and there was none here. The only way forward, other than abandoning the enterprise altogether, was to embrace the craziness. Tom, my modern character, is my commentator: it doesn’t make sense to him, either. I looked past the writing to the young authors themselves. There was conflict there, especially between Branwell and Charlotte. As they grew older, their vision diverged sharply. They wrote against each other in rival Glass Town publications. Branwell's focus was on politics, war and fighting, Charlotte preferred palace intrigue and romance. I also detected rebellion in the ranks. At some point, Emily and Anne must have tired of being bossed by the older two and decided to found their own world of Gondal. That was the point where I would introduce Tom. Nothing written by Emily or Anne has survived, apart from some poems, so I had carte blanche. Rebellion would mean war in Glass Town and out of it. 

The young Brontēs had given me a fascinating world, not least the Great Glass Town, beautifully described in detail - they were talented writers even as children - and a fabulous cast of characters from the Dukes Wellington  and Douro to Branwell's lowlife 'rare lads': D'Eath, Sneaky, Tom Scroven, Dick Crack-Skull and Richard Naughty. A perfect villain in the person of the Duke of Northangerland aka Rogue. Haughty dark beauties, like Lady Zenobia Ellerington and the passionately independent Augusta Geraldine Almeida, A.G.A., Emily's character who will become Queen of Gondal. 

Northangerland aka Rogue

I'd take my cue from the Brontës - anything goes. In the background is the gaming that got Tom into this in the first place. Got him in, but can’t get him out again. Fantasy Past meeting Fantasy Present. But fantasy doesn't exist in time and space. So if a character from one world can enter another, why not the other way round? Anything can happen, right? So if a boy from the present can go to Glass Town, why not take Emily Brontë into our fantasy worlds: Apocalypse, Zombies, Grand Theft Auto, Gotham City? I don't think she'd have been phased by it, not one little bit. 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

The Top Ten Gothic Novels - Chosen by Anna Mazzola

As the nights draw in and the spirits move closer, it’s time to huddle beneath your Victorian counterpane with an unbearably creepy book. Many brilliant Gothic reads are being released in time for Halloween: Melmoth, The Corset, House of Ghosts, The Lingering, and The House on Vesper Sands, to name but a few. All play with and develop ideas and tropes that have been ghosting about since the 18th century. Ever since Conrad was crushed to death by a giant helmet in The Castle of Otranto, the Gothic genre has been evolving strangely and blooming darkly.

Here, as a discussion/fight-starter rather than a definitive list, are my top ten favourite Gothic reads.

1. Jane Eyre (1847)

Sinister boarding schools, ghostly visions, eerie laughter, suppressed sexuality and angry women in the attic. Charlotte Brontë used Gothic elements in Jane Eyre to create a new female language. Critics of the time were not impressed, however. The Quarterly Review did 'not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.’

2. Wuthering Heights (1847)

Wuthering Heights was also controversial in its time because of its unflinching depictions of cruelty and its challenge to Victorian societal ideals. Even now, Wuthering Heights remains a raw and powerful read, and many authors cite its influence in their own work. Many of us have wondered what else this formidable author might have written, but Emily Brontë died at the age of 30, saying that she would have ‘no poisoning doctor’ near her.

Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey, were all published in the same year.

3. The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Henry James said he preferred to create ghosts that were eerie extensions of everyday reality: ‘the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy.’ For nearly 120 years, readers have been trying to work out whether the ‘strange and sinister’ were only in the unnamed governess's mind, or whether the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw are in fact real.

4. Rebecca (1938)

Though dismissed by many critics at the time as romances, novels such as Jamaica Inn, Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel (and many of Du Maurier’s short stories) are more akin to mysteries or psychological thrillers strongly embued with Gothic elements. As with Henry James, the real and the ghostly often elide, so that Mrs Danvers is part human, part malevolent ghost, and Rebecca herself haunts the imaginations of the characters, and also that of the reader, long after they’ve finished the book.

5. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

‘My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.’ 

It’s my favourite first paragraph so had to be quoted in full. We Have Always was Shirley Jackson’s last novel and, in my view, her best. In fact, it’s probably my favourite book on this list: deceptively simple, darkly funny and profoundly unsettling. Jackson's biographer referred to it as a 'paean' to the author's agoraphobia. If you haven’t discovered Shirley Jackson yet, you’re in for a rare and disturbing treat.

6. The Bloody Chamber (1979)

Angela Carter was hailed as the ‘grand-dame of the modern English gothic’, saying that she’d ‘always been fond of Poe and Hoffmann – Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious.’

The Bloody Chamber is perhaps her most gothic work. In her collection of stories about witches, forsaken castles, haunted forests and howling wolves, Carter gave fairy tales a fantastic, feminist twist.

7. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985)

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with an exceptional sense of smell. He survives his mother’s attempt to kill him at birth and grows up in stinking, extraordinary 18th century Paris. Grenouille becomes a perfumer in order to preserve that most precious of smells: his murder victims. Dark, brilliant and building in bizarreness to a climax you’re unlikely to forget. Kurt Curbain wrote a song about it.

8.  Beloved (1987)

Gothic fiction often connects with the fears and anxieties of its time. Beloved is the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver after their escape from slavery. Their home in Cincinnati is haunted by a revenant, whom they believe to be the ghost of Sethe's daughter, Beloved. This astonishing book uses the Gothic to expose the horrors and silence of slavery.

9. The Little Stranger (2009)

Sarah Waters has apparently said she did not set out to write a ghost story, but she seems accidentally to have written one of the best ones. It is the 1940s and, as Hundreds Hall decays, peculiar powers take hold. Superbly measured and deeply chilling. As with the best Gothic tales, we’re left unsettled and unsure. And probably wanting to see the movie.

10. The Loney (2015)

Of the many brilliant Gothic novels from recent years, The Loney stands out like a moss-covered tombstone. Both old and new and suspended somewhere between the supernatural, the strange, and the outright horrific, Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel is, as Sarah Perry has said, a real Gothic masterpiece.

And yes, I realise I’ve missed off many of the classics usually included in lists of this kind. But what would be the point of a Gothic list, if it conformed to expectations?


__________________________________________________________

Anna Mazzola is a writer of historical crime fiction. Her second novel, The Story Keeper, is a tale of dark folklore and missing girls on the Isle of Skye.

https://annamazzola.com
https://twitter.com/Anna_Mazz

Charlotte Brontë's Birthday by Katherine Clements

This month, while many of my fellow history girls are celebrating the Bard, I’ve been thinking about another important literary landmark: the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë.

Charlotte was born on 21st April 1816. In fact, this year marks five years of Brontë bicentenaries, with Branwell’s birth in 2017, Emily’s in 2018 and Anne’s in 2020. The Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage Museum are celebrating with a programme of events, exhibitions and publications, including a new collection of short stories inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracey Chevalier.

The Brontë sisters by Branwell Brontë, Charlotte on the right. Owned by the National Portrait Gallery.

A year or so ago, when I was contemplating setting my next novel on the Yorkshire Moors, I made the pilgrimage to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth – the house where the sisters lived and wrote – seeking something of the landscape and atmosphere that so inspired Charlotte and her siblings. The museum is filled with a fascinating collection of furniture, artefacts and personal possessions that give a real insight into the women behind the words. So, in a nod to one of my literary heroines, here are ten things I learned about Charlotte that day…

1. Charlotte’s first ambition was to be a painter.
Charlotte was a keen artist and exhibited two drawings in an exhibition in Leeds in 1834. Many of the 180 drawings that have been attributed to her are accomplished copies or adapted versions of other artists’ work and the Parsonage has several original nature paintings. But when her publisher asked her to illustrate the second edition of Jane Eyre she declined – revisiting her portfolio she reflected, ‘I feel much inclined to consign the whole collection of drawings to the fire.’

2. She was self-conscious about her height
Charlotte was small – though don't know her exact height, estimates based on her clothing suggest she was about four feet-ten inches. Dresses and shoes on display at the Parsonage certainly bear this out. George Smith, Charlotte’s publisher, describes his first impression of Charlotte and Ann as ‘two rather quaintly-dressed little ladies’ and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote 'her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw'.

3. Lowood School in Jane Eyre was based on Charlotte’s own experience
The sisters all attended the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. Conditions were harsh, rations frugal and discipline strict. An outbreak of typhus sent them home in 1825 but the two elder siblings, Maria and Elizabeth both died of tuberculosis soon afterwards. Charlotte blamed the school for their deaths and the deterioration of her own health. She even modelled Lowood School's infamous Mr Brocklehurst on her real headmaster.

4. She was almost sued for defamation
The founder and head teacher of the Clergy Daughter’s School, Rev William Carus-Wilson, didn’t take kindly to Charlotte’s unflattering representation and sought legal advice. Court action was only avoided when Charlotte penned an apology, stating that she’d exaggerated the details for dramatic effect. She gave Carus-Wilson permission to publish her retraction, but he never did.

5. She had bad teeth
Elizabeth Gaskell noticed Charlotte’s dental problems when they first met, writing to a friend that she had ‘many teeth gone.’ Charlotte supposedly spent some of her earnings from Jane Eyre on dentistry, writing woefully to her friend Ellen about a proposed visit to a dentist in Leeds.

6. She received proposals from three men
Despite her unfortunate teeth, she attracted the attentions of Reverend Henry Nussey, brother of her friend Ellen in 1838. She refused him – she wasn’t in love. Her second suitor, Rev David Pryce proposed to her the following year after meeting her only once. Despite falling for her married tutor during a stay in Brussels (an interlude that inspired the novel Villette) Charlotte eventually married Arthur Bell Nichols, her father’s curate, accepting his second proposal in 1854.

7. She was ambitious
Keen to avoid the limited work open to her as a governess or teacher (all three sisters had attempted these careers with little success or happiness) Charlotte encouraged her sisters to publish their writing. It was she who led the approach to publishers and, by outliving her sisters, experienced the most success in her lifetime.

8. Her first book sold only two copies
Writers – take heart! Despite her ambition, the first volume of poetry by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, published in 1846, was paid for by the sisters themselves and sold only two copies. After the success of their novels, and Anne and Emily’s deaths, a second edition, edited by Charlotte, was issued in 1850 and has remained in print ever since.

9. The ‘madwoman in the attic’ was inspired by real life
It’s often said that the inspiration for Bertha in Jane Eyre came from Charlotte’s 1839 visit to Norton Conyers, a 17th century manor house near Ripon that reputedly housed a real madwoman in the attic. There are other more convincing models for Thornfield Hall itself, including Ellen Nussey’s home Rydings and North Lees Hall in Derbyshire, but Charlotte’s visit to Norton Conyers must have sparked her imagination.

10. She may have died of morning sickness
The exact cause of Charlotte’s death in unknown. She fell pregnant and became very ill shortly after her marriage in 1854. Elizabeth Gaskell writes that she suffered ‘sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness’. Her death certificate, dated March 31st 1855, states that she died of tuberculosis, the same disease that killed her sisters, but opinion is divided and we’ll probably never know.

If you’d like to find out more about Charlotte’s life, I recommend the new biography by Clare Harman. And the Brontë Parsonage Museum website is a wealth of information, including details of the Brontë 200 celebrations.

www.katherineclements.co.uk

www.facebook.com/KatherineClementsBooks

@KL_Clements