Brontë Studies. Volume 47. Issue 1

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 47 Issue 1, January 2022) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial
pp.  1-5 Author:  Fanning, Susan E.

Unveiling the Blue Plaque: The Brontë birthplace, 30 July 2021
pp.  6-8  Author: Stewart, Michael

Anne Brontë and Scarborough
pp. 9-17 Author: Chitham, Edward
Abstract: 
It has been claimed that Anne Brontë could know little about the gentry and aristocracy since her experience was so limited. This essay shows that this was far from the case. Her life in five summers with the Robinsons has been called ‘a visit’, but altogether she spent a total of twenty-five weeks at Scarborough, almost half a year. During this time she met and observed the varied life of a busy town and its visitors, learning about the lives of a wide range of people. We are able to discover from the lists published in Scarborough newspapers the names of many of her neighbours, in some cases living in the same apartments. The row which has been called ‘Wood’s Lodgings’ was in fact shared between William Wood and Dr William Wilson. The row opposite was also, in the main, high-quality lodgings. Anne could observe their occupants as well. Some of the visitors she may have known, but others she had not previously met would have an influence on her writing.

The Presentation of Hindley Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights
pp.  18-29   Author: Tytler, Graeme
Abstract: 
Hindley Earnshaw is quite likely to be adjudged by many readers as the most unpleasant character portrayed in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847). Certainly, the number of negative references to him far outbalance those made to any other figure in the narrative. Yet it is interesting to note that, in spite of our perforce reacting unfavourably for the most part to Hindley’s speech and behaviour, we nevertheless find ourselves eventually having quite ambivalent feelings about him, and that principally through his association with people outside his immediate family: Nelly Dean, Joseph, Isabella and, to some extent, Mr Kenneth. It is, moreover, through these relationships that Brontë partly supplements what we think we already know about these characters by revealing unusual or unexpected aspects of them. Indeed, it is a testimony to Emily Brontë’s profound knowledge of human nature that she enables us to understand why we may sometimes feel sympathetic towards someone all too readily dismissed as a mere villain.

An allusion to Don Juan: reappraising Branwell Brontë’s Byronic self-fashioning
pp. 30-46 Author: Shears, Jonathon
Abstract: 
In January 1847, Branwell Brontë wrote a letter to his friend J. B. Leyland quoting from Lord Byron’s satirical epic Don Juan (1819–24). This was an unusual choice of allusion given that the topic is Byron’s feelings of longsuffering that Branwell usually related to other Byron works such as Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) and Manfred (1817). This essay explores the reasons why the stanzas to which Branwell refers seemed a more appropriate literary touchstone at a point in his life when he was publicly suffering personal and professional embarrassment as he struggled to come to terms with romantic disappointment and his heavy drinking.

‘A Hymn’, Hymnody and Anne Brontë’s Religious Poetry
pp. 47-60 Author:  Butterworth, Robert
Abstract:
Anne Brontë’s ‘A Hymn’ was written at a time when hymns were ‘of the moment’ and many women were engaged in hymnody. It shares with Anne’s other religious poems a vision of God as mighty, powerful, loving, merciful and actively interventionist, and a vision of humanity as feeble, inadequate, inconstant and inconsistent. It is distinguished by its exploration of two versions of the universe: one informed by God its Creator and the other its Godless alternative. ‘A Hymn’ has many traditional stylistic features of hymns and on one level belongs to a familiar class of hymn, the hymn of doubt; but it is also radical in facing head-on an atheistic vision emerging in the nineteenth century.

A Brontë Reading List: Part 14
pp.  61-74 Author: Ogden, James; Cook, Peter & Pearson, Sara L.
Abstract:
This list is part of an annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical work. The earlier parts were published in Brontë Studies, 32.2 (July 2007), 33.3 (November 2008), 34.3 (November 2009), 36.4 (November 2011), 37.3 (September 2012), 39.1 (January 2014), 41.3 (September 2016), 42.4 (November 2017), 43.4 (October 2018), 44.3 (July 2019), 44.4 (October 2019), 45.4 (October 2020) and 46.4 (October 2021). The present part covers work published in 2019.

Book Reviews

Agnes Grey. Edited by Robin L. Inboden
pp.  75-76 Author: Hay, Adelle

Brontë Places and Poems
pp.  76-78 Author: Duckett. Bob

The Illustrated Letters of the Brontës
pp.  79-80 Author: Duckett, Bob

Walking the Invisible: Following in the Brontës’ Footsteps
pp.  80-82 Author: Powell, Sarah

Lies and The Brontës: The Quest for the Jenkins Family
pp.  82-83 Author: Cook, Peter