The Brontës only wrote novels!

The Yorkshire Post publishes an article about ... "the other Brontës", the Gatty family:

They provided the name for The Brownies and their books were favourites of their day. Stephen McClarence reports on reviving interest in the tales of the Victorian Gatty family.
People can get very passionate about the Gatty family. Some years ago, at a talk about these once-world-famous West Riding writers, the speaker called them "the other Yorkshire Brontës".
A woman in the third row was indignant. "The Brontës?" she scoffed. "They only wrote novels!"
Well, that puts the also-rans from Haworth in their place. But the parallels are there. Both families lived in village vicarages. Both endured poor health. Both published their own family magazines. And both wrote copiously.
The difference, of course, is that the Brontës are still celebrated and the Gattys of Ecclesfield, a sturdy stone village between Sheffield and Barnsley, aren't. Though they will be if Mel and Joan Jones, a husband-and-wife team of Gatty enthusiasts, have their way. (...) (Read more)
Alongside these sad documents, however, the Sheffield Archives also have copies of the family magazine (Circulation: 12; "Price: One kiss"). It's full
of stories, poems and drawings, and, though it
simmers on a lower imaginative light, inevitably brings to mind the family magazine written at Haworth parsonage.
And there's the Brontë comparison again. The Gattys will have to live with it, though as Mel Jones says, recalling Margaret's scientific fame: "She had a seaweed and a marine worm named after her. None of the Brontës could claim that!"

The Story of a Nomadic Wife by Mel and Joan Jones, and their earlier book The Remarkable Gatty Family of Ecclesfield (both from Green Tree Publications) are available at £4.99 each, post-free, from 0114 245 1235.

Rivals to the Brontës or not the article and the story of the Gattys is truly worth reading. From BrontëBlog we would like to wish Mel and Joan Jones the best of luck in their endeavours in bringing back this family to the place they most certainly deserve.

Categories: Books, Victorian Era