One of the highlights of this Brontë year is without a doubt Christine Alexander's edition of Brontë juvenilia for Oxford University Press:Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and GondalCategories: Books, Juvenilia
Selected Early Writings
by The Brontës
Edited by Christine Alexander.
Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics)
23 September 2010
640 pages; 1 map; three MS facsimile pages
ISBN13: 978-0-19-282763-0
ISBN10: 0-19-282763-4
In their collaborative early writings, the Brontës created and peopled the most extraordinary fantasy worlds, whose geography and history they elaborated in numerous stories, poems, and plays. Together they invented characters based on heroes and writers such as Wellington, Napoleon, Scott, and Byron, whose feuds, alliances, and love affairs weave an intricate web of social and political intrigue in imaginary colonial lands in Africa and the Pacific Ocean. The writings of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal are youthful experiments in imitation and parody, wild romance and realistic recording--a playful literary world that they would draw upon for their early and later work. In this generous selection, the early writings of the Brontë's are presented together for the first time. Christine Alexander's Introduction explores the rich imaginative lives of the Brontes, and the tension between their maturing authorship and creative freedom. The edition includes Charlotte Brontë's Roe Head Journal , and Emily and Anne's Diary Papers . The edition also has a key to characters and place, detailed notes, and a map of Glass Town and Angria.
* The only edition to include juvenilia by all four Bronte siblings, this unique volumne highlights the collaborative nature of the early 'plays' of Glass Town that developed into the different sagas of Angria and Gondal.
* The youthful writings of Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell fuelled the talent that went on to produce Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall . This selection enables the reader to experience their collaborative fantasy worlds and developing creative energy.
* The text is a new transcription from the manuscripts, meticulously edited to provide an accessible reading version while maintaining the original idiosyncrasies.
* The Introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the imaginative worlds of the Brontes and their developing writing practices.
* Includes the important autobiographical material, Charlotte's Roe Head Journal and Anne's Diary Papers.
* The texts are supplemented by a key to characters and place, detailed notes, and a map of Glass Town and Angria.
Does anybody know another book or even better an e-book that contains Charlotte's Roe Head Journal? And how big a journal is that? Are we talking about some twenty pages or bigger?
ReplyDeleteI wish that pdf included the whole introduction, but we can't have everything in this world :p
Heather Glen's Tales of Angria (published in 2006 by Penguin) also includes the Roe Head Journal, which is actually a collection of fragments, not a real journal.
ReplyDeleteIn this new edition it is about 17 pages (plus helpful explanatory notes).
I don't think there's an ebook which includes all the fragments.
Oh, thank you! I wonder how come those fragments were saved? Charlotte herself must have preserved them up to a point. But why? Maybe she wanted to save a certain state of mind that she was into? There must have been a lot of papers saved in the Brontes' household :)
ReplyDeleteI don't think it was a frame of mind that Charlotte wanted to remember particularly, as the comments about her day-to-day real life are not particularly happy and her Angria imaginings are always getting interrupted. Still, though, for some reason some writings were kept and others discarded. It was probably pure chance in the case of some. We are lucky to have them, though, and the Roe Head Journal is a really good read.
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