Brontë Studies. Volume 40, Issue 2

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 40, Issue 2, April 2015) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial
pp. iii-iv Author: Adams, Amber M.

Found: The ‘Lost’ Portrait of Emily Brontë
pp. 85-103    Author:   Heywood, Christopher
Abstract:
An illustration in The Woman at Home (1894), captioned ‘EMILY BRONTË. From a painting by Charlotte Brontë, hitherto unpublished’, matches an unsigned portrait, recently found in a private collection. The illustration was copied from the portrait of Emily Brontë that was seen in Haworth in 1879 by William Robertson Nicoll (1851–1923), owner and editor of The Woman at Home. A pencilled inscription on the back of the newly found portrait, apparently in Charlotte’s handwriting, reads: ‘Emily Brontë / Sister of Charlotte Bro[nté] / Currer Bell’. In 1908 Nicoll declared in an article that the original portrait had become ‘irrevocably lost’. This article proposes that it has been found. The painter is identified here as the Bradford portrait artist, John Hunter Thompson (1808–90).

The Library at Ponden Hall
pp. 104-149    Author:  Duckett, Bob
Abstract:
The long-established Heaton family of Ponden Hall (also known as Ponden House), 2½ miles (4 km) west of Haworth, was important to the people of Haworth, the Brontë family included. This article considers the remarkable library at Ponden Hall to which the Brontës had access. Hitherto, the contents of this library have been known only by a poorly compiled auctioneer’s sale catalogue. An improved version of this catalogue has been compiled. The role of the library in the Brontës’ extensive knowledge of literature, travel and law is considered. An abridged version of this revised catalogue is appended to this article as an appendix.

Pat Prunty and Print: The Printed Word in Eighteenth-Century Ulster
pp. 150-166      Author: Adams, Amber M.
Abstract:
Thomas Carlyle wrote: ‘the three great elements of modern civilization [are] Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant religion’.1 This paper discusses printing in eighteenth-century Ulster and its environs where Patrick Brontë spent his formative years, 1777–1802, and presents printing as the vital medium for the dissemination of ideas, political and educational theories, radical thought and entertainment pieces. A picture is built of the books available in Ireland, printing in Ulster, folk literature, and the effects of the flourishing reprinting industry in Dublin. The importance of newspapers, the delight of the Brontës, is reviewed. The provision of schools, book clubs and libraries is described. Patrick Brontë had access to all this; in turn, his continuing engagement with the printed word would devolve to his famous children.

Reviews
pp. 167-179