More on the Brontë Brother

Another review of Douglas A. Martin's Branwell: A novel of the Brontë Brother is published in the Village Voice. The reviewer, Joy Press, says among other things:

Martin avoids the temptation of plunging headfirst into the gothic, instead conveying Branwell's psychic turmoil in simple, stripped-down sentences. A hopeless romantic, Martin's hero lives inside a dream, dazed by his failure and an unacceptable interest in other young men. Most Brontë biographies suggest that he was fired from a tutoring position because he fathered an illegitimate child, but this novel hints at another kind of scandal involving Branwell's male charge: "He can show him some things if he doesn't tell his parents, in the stable. He could have a little drink there sometime. Just one." Martin sparsely fills in the outlines of Branwell's dissolution, a suitably phantom account of the man who painted himself out of his own family portrait.

Erm... most Brontë biographies say what? Poor Lydia Robinson not being credited with Branwell's destruction. Of course, the theory that Branwell had an affair in the Lake District is plausible but his fathering a child is not (see for instance Barker's The Brontës where the latter is torn to pieces). So that's not what most Brontë biographies say.

Categories: Books, Branwell_Brontë, Fiction