The Brothers Bell did not exist

The New York Sun's Poem of the Day is Anne Brontë's Music on Christmas Morning.

Today’s Poem of the Day, “Music on Christmas Morning,” appeared originally in 1846, in a volume of poetry by three authors, purportedly brothers: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The book was a stunning non-success, selling only two copies in the year of its publication. Like so many poets of the mid-nineteenth century — see, for example, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, whose “Sonnet XVI” was Poem of the Day on December 14 — the Brothers Bell might have languished unknown in their lifetimes and beyond. Only one stroke of fortune saved them from literary obscurity.

That stroke of fortune? It was simply that the Brothers Bell did not exist, except as pen names for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Remarkably undeterred by their failure in the poetry market, all three sisters responded by beginning the novels which established them, eventually, under their own names, in the English literary canon. Anne, the youngest sister, saw her first novel, “Agnes Grey,” detailing her harrowing experiences as a governess, appear in the aftermath of her sister Charlotte’s success with “Jane Eyre,” to be criticized as a pallid imitation. She lived to write one more novel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” before succumbing, at age twenty-nine, to the tuberculosis which had already ravaged her family. For the rest of their short lives, the sisters continued to write and publish poems as well as novels. Emily’s “To a Wreath of Snow,” for example, appeared as Poem of the Day on Monday.

As Acton Bell the poet, Anne Brontë wrote pleasingly enough, if not with the righteous fury that animates her novels. The Brothers Bell, after all, belonged to an era when anyone who was literate at all could produce a competent poem in rhyme and meter. Most of the poems in the 1846 collection feel like poems that anyone could have written under a pseudonym, simply for something to do — a person perhaps more sincere and less funny than Jane Austen, whose “Oh! Mr. Best, You’re Very Bad,” appeared as Poem of the Day in October. 

The offerings of this fictional Acton Bell, which comprise the third section of the ill-fated volume, deal variously with bowers, vanity, penitence, faith, doubt, mortality, and William Cowper, among other subjects. “Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day,” with its intimation of tumultuous passions, strikes perhaps most closely at its author’s true nature. Yet “Music on Christmas Morning” also rises above the level of the expected. The voice of its tetrameter ababcc sestets feels authentic and fresh, as though its speaker were not merely rehearsing conventional sentiments. “Music I love,” this speaker frankly declares at the poem’s opening — but no music so much as the music of Christmas morning, spelling out with joy the hope of salvation. (Joseph Bottum)

Electric Lit interviews writer and film director Anna Biller about her novel Bluebeard's Castle and how 'the Gothic Gives Voice to Women’s Pleasure—and Pain'.

CD: I wanted to ask you about feminine fantasy more broadly. You’re so committed to a traditionally feminine aesthetic in your films, and now also in this novel: the lavish clothing, the sweet food, the hunky man. And each of these pleasures is actually really fun to read about. But they also end up having a dark side—the sugar crash after the desserts, or the man who ends up being, you know, completely evil. Do you think that women’s fantasy is doomed to endanger us?

AB: No, I don’t think it’s always doomed to endanger us. But do I think the Gothic is about women being entombed within a castle that’s owned by a man, under his rules and regulations. So, the Gothic is about being imprisoned within patriarchy, and about the woman either making peace with that, or escaping it.

That’s why those old-style novel covers are so evocative—the kind of cover that I copied with my book jacket, which shows the woman fleeing from the castle. It already tells the whole story, that cover: she’s fleeing from this wealth, this security, this pleasure, this dark fantasy that’s exciting. The man means pleasure, but he also means control. Are you willing to play the role of the little perfect doll to a man, and have all the money, have all the pleasure—but also be under his control? Or do you want independence, which could also mean poverty and loneliness?

Jane Eyre is a perfect example of that. Jane can go back to the castle in the end and be with Rochester because he’s maimed and blind, and therefore, they’re equal. He doesn’t have power over her because he has to depend on her to be his eyes. But if he weren’t maimed and blind, well, she couldn’t stay there with him because he’d continue to dominate her.

CD: Like he does to Bertha.

AB: Exactly. And that’s why Wide Sargasso Sea was so breathtaking for me. What that novel does is also what I was interested in doing: talking about the wife before the last wife. In the original Bluebeard fairy tale, the main character does survive. But what about the other wives, the wives that were forgotten? (Chelsea Davis)

The Yorkshire Dalesman lists the 'Top 10 underrated Yorkshire towns and villages' and one of them is

STANBURY

Surrounded by moors and farmland, this little village is one mile west from the more famous, Brontë-centric village of Haworth. Though this doesn’t mean that Stanbury holds no appeal! Close to the Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens farmhouse, the village is bursting with opportunities to explore Brontë country: nearby Ponden Hall, a Grade-II listed building, is thought to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights‘ Thrushcross Grange, while the village itself boasts the Wuthering Heights Inn – an ideal spot if you’re a walker in need of some rest, or simply someone who wants to take in the views!

Great British Life goes for a walk in Lancashire.

5. Pass the Atom on the left and follow the path steeply downhill at first and keep on into some woods. When the path splits, take the left fork signed to ‘Hails Barn Toilets and Picnic Centre’. Reach this and turn right, passing the ruins of Wycoller Hall.

Note: Wycoller is a beautiful little village noted for its ancient bridges, of which the twin arched Packhorse bridge is the most famous. Wycoller Hall was the home of the Hartley family and was built in 1550 by Piers Hartley and was partially dismantled in 1818 then fell into ruin. It is thought to have been the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (John Lenehan)