This post is designed to celebrate the Brontë sisters and their work in another instalment of our Five Fascinating Facts series. If you enjoy this post, you might also want to see how you fare with our 10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read.
1. The sisters’ first volume of poems sold just two copies. Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846) sold a total of two copies when first published. However, it was the failure of this poetry volume that convinced the sisters to turn their attention to writing novels: the following year Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey were all published. In a letter of March 1845, Charlotte had written, ‘I shall soon be 30 – and I have done nothing yet. … I feel as if we were all buried here.’ The sisters subsequently adopted their androgynous pseudonyms – Currer Bell for Charlotte, Ellis Bell for Emily, and Acton Bell for Anne – because they suspected their work would receive adverse reviews if it appeared under a female name (compare George Eliot and George Sand). Interestingly, Brontë wasn’t their original surname: their father was named Brunty but he thought this sounded too Irish (sure enough, the Brontë sisters were all of Irish stock), so he altered it to Brontë after one of Horatio Nelson’s titles, Duke of Bronte. What better way to offset the Irishness of your original surname than by paying tribute to the English hero of the hour?
2. Emily paid £50 to have Wuthering Heights published. Although it went on to become a worldwide bestseller and is now perhaps the most famous of all the Brontë novels (it’s between that novel and Jane Eyre), the novel failed to find a publisher and so Brontë paid for the novel to be published, to offset against potential losses to the publisher. Sure enough, the novel was a commercial failure at the time and Emily died, just one year after its publication, believing it had been a flop and would soon be forgotten. (In 2007, a rare first edition of the novel sold at auction for £114,000.) Now, of course, the novel is one of the most widely read Victorian classics, and is immortalised in numerous ways, not least in Kate Bush’s 1978 hit single of the same name. Interestingly, Emily Brontë and Kate Bush share a birthday, July 30th.
3. The earliest known instance of the phrase ‘Wild West’ appears in a novel by Charlotte. Her 1849 novel Shirley also helped to popularise Shirley as a girls’ name. Before Brontë’s novel, Shirley was exclusively a boys’ name (derived from the surname Shirley), but when Brontë used it for her female protagonist, the name gained popularity as a girls’ name. Talking of Charlotte, there was no ‘madwoman in the attic’ in Jane Eyre: Bertha Mason/Rochester was confined to a room on the third floor of the house, which was the room below the attic. So Gilbert and Gubar’s landmark 1979 work of feminist literary criticism should perhaps be renamed as The Madwoman in the Third-Storey Room!
4. Emily Brontë’s dog mourned her death. It is said that Emily’s dog, Keeper, followed her coffin to the grave when she died in 1848 and, for weeks after, moaned and howled outside her bedroom door. Dogs in Wuthering Heights, you may recall, don’t fare too well: Heathcliff hangs Isabella Linton’s dog from a tree (the Lintons’ dog had earlier injured Cathy when she and Heathcliff had ventured over to Thrushcross Grange).
5. Emily once had to put out her brother, Branwell, when he set fire to his bedclothes. The fate of Branwell has been much discussed in the history of the Brontë sisters: his alcoholism helped to inspired the drunken husband Arthur Huntingdon in Anne’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), while there is a rumour that he died standing up, leaning against the mantelpiece, just to prove that it could be done.
If you enjoyed these facts, we have more great Victoriana in our facts about Victorian novelist George Eliot and this selection of Emily Brontë’s best short poems. And discover more great trivia about female authors in our post celebrating the best facts about Jane Austen.
Image: Portrait of Charlotte Bronte by J. H. Thompson, c. 1839, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Jane Eyre also has that scene where Bertha sets fire to Rochester’s bed — with him in it. Guess that scene affected Charlotte too!
Good link – that had slipped my mind! It definitely sounds like another example of Branwell’s exploits making their way into the sisters’ fiction…
From what I understand about the family, they were brilliant and creative, but they didn’t get out all that much due to the influence of their father. I guess the only place they had to escape was within their own imaginations.
Fable. Their father went to admire Charlotte’s drawing ‘Bolton Abbey’ when she (18) exhibited alongside stars of the day, including Linnell, Turner, Palmer, and her prey, Landseer himself, at the Royal Northern Festival for the Promotion of Visual Arts. (The girls met Thompson there, greatly admired by rev Patrick, and Branwell met his ‘best friend’ JB Leyland.)
Very cool post:) thanks for sharing!!
Thank you – glad you enjoyed it!
This was such an interesting read! Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel and the Brontë sisters fascinate me. :-)
Thank you!
Reblogged this on Library of Erana and commented:
It’s sad to think Miss Bronte died thinking Wuthering Heights was a failure. It is a fantastic book covering romance, class issues, race and social stigma. The love between Heathcliff and Catherine transcends even death.
Hello! Very interesting piece. I enjoyed it. Thank you! I hope I’m appreciated in my time. Ha,ha! ;)
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. And I couldn’t agree more ;)
Nice post setting the story straight about the sisters. Thanks for stopping by my blog. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Connie – glad you enjoyed it! And my pleasure – I’ll be stopping by your blog in future.
Very interesting post. We were just discussing Jane Eyre at a family dinner. ;)
How timely! Superb. And thanks, glad you enjoyed the post :)
oh that was informative :)
Thanks! We aim to please :)
An interesting read, thank you. Two of my favorite books, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre.
Thanks – glad you enjoyed it!
I never knew the Brunty bit. Thanks for the interesting-as-always posting.
Great fact, that – somehow ‘Charlotte Brunty’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Thanks – glad you liked the post :)
Thanks for a great post. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is one of my all-time favourites – so glad to see it in the list!
Thanks, Sue! I know, I think Tenant is under-appreciated (including by Charlotte herself), so it’s always nice to meet a fan of it :)
Thanks for posting this informative piece!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed!
Reblogged this on Mistrz i Małgorzata and commented:
Po prostu przeczytaj to/ Just read it…….
Fascinating post, thank you. Interesting that Wuthering Heights was an early successful example of self-publishing! – and that the Bronte’s first book sold even fewer copies than mine … there’s hope for us yet.
Reblogged this on CEOnlineWriting Blog and commented:
I might beg to differ on the Gilbert and Gubar point and Bertha mason in the attic versus not in the attic. It’s clear that the third floor of Thornfield Hall is very much the top floor of the house and, I’m pretty sure, underneath the roof…which makes it the attic. But otherwise love this blog. I knew most of those details by virtue of having had relatives living about 20 minutes from Haworth. But great blog and post.
Hey would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re using?
I’m planning to start my own blog soon but I’m having
a tough time making a decision between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal.
The reason I ask is because your layout seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique.
P.S Sorry for being off-topic but I had to ask!
Consider folks, for a minute… those of us who enjoyed the singular expression of Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights… that perhaps she… among all her sisters… was the most talented and should still be the most revered. A close inspection of Jane Eyre finds many of Emily’s gothic talents explored, but without the hokey moralism that Charlotte used. Furthermore, who, with a straight face, could call Charlotte’s novel Villette her “mature work” as if something had been missing from Jane Eyre… in retrospect, who still doesn’t think that Charlotte’s more talented younger sister helped her with the novel that we all know to this day as Charlotte’s greatest… Jane Eyre?
Oh Ed, I think you’re right- Charlotte was ‘fictionally romantic’ and superficial by comparison. Some of Emily’s poems really cut- ‘from the gut’- brilliant !