Tonight on BBC Radio 4:
Making History
14 Sep 2010, 15:00 on BBC Radio 4.
Presenter: Vanessa Collingridge
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4.
Listen again here
In 1846 Charlotte Brontë began her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, in a terraced house in Hulme, south Manchester miles away from the Yorkshire moorland that we associate with her family. What was she doing there?
Vanessa Collingridge discovers Charlotte's father the Reverend Patrick Brontë was undergoing cutting-edge eye surgery to rid him of cataracts that left him almost blind. The surgery appears almost brutal, with the patient being held by two of the surgeon's assistants, but it was very effective and the only drawback seemed to be the month-long recovery process during which Reverend Bronte had to lie still on a bed whilst his eyes healed.
Charlotte used this time well to start writing her book, but what was this part of Manchester like just two years after the city influenced Engels to write The Condition of the English Working Classes, his often grim description of the world's first modern city? Vanessa meets up with Professor Alan Kidd to explore 1840's Manchester and talks to a leading eye surgeon about the treatment Charlotte's father received.
Categories: Audio-Radio, Charlotte Brontë
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