Saturday 30 April 2022 (10.00-14.00)
Université Saint-Louis, Rue du Marais 119, Brussels
Monica Kendall: Do you like the truth? The Brontës and my Family.
Monica Kendall has degrees from Oxford University and University College London and has worked as an academic book editor for years. She edited the secret diary of a teenage great-aunt of hers trapped in occupied Brussels during World War 1, Miss Cavell Was Shot: the Diaries of Amy Hodson, 1914-1920 (2015).
Monica Kendall’s book Lies and the Brontës: The Quest for the Jenkins Family was published in April 2021. She will talk about her research discoveries concerning her great-great-grandparents Rev. Evan and Eliza Jenkins, who took care of the Brontë sisters in Brussels, and whom no one researched before. Eliza found the school which the Brontë sisters attended, and she was interviewed by Mrs Gaskell after Charlotte’s death. The sisters attended Evan’s services at the Chapel Royal on many occasions. Monica will debunk many of the stories about Charlotte’s time in Brussels, and give insights into the family that Charlotte knew well over two years, including the Jenkins son who features in Charlotte’s Villette. Her website contains much about her quest and about Brussels: Monica Kendall
A Brussels Brontë ramble with Derek Blyth
For more than 30 years, Derek Blyth has lived and worked as a journalist in Brussels. During this time, he has written more than a dozen guidebooks including
The 500 Hidden Secrets of Brussels and
Hidden Belgium, as well as a guide to the people, places and weird traditions that make Belgium unique (
100 Belgian Icons). He is currently working on a 15-episode
Tour of Flanders: a Tale of Many Cities (the first four episodes can be read online at
www.the-low-countries.com).
While working in the 1990s on his guide Brussels for Pleasure, Blyth read Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and realised that many of the places described in the novel still existed. He went on to develop a walking tour of Brontë’s Brussels and later became one of the founding members of the Brussels Brontë Group. He presented a talk at the group’s first meeting on Charlotte Brontë’s four letters to Heger, based on a research visit to the British Library in London.
His latest talk will take you on a rambling tour around some of the places in Brussels that inspired Charlotte’s fiction. It will also briefly touch on other famous writers who found their voice in Brussels, including Kark Marx, Multatuli and Joseph Conrad. He will conclude that without Brussels, we wouldn’t have some of the great works of literature including Villette, Max Havelaar, Heart of Darkness and the Communist Manifesto.
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