Illustrative Genii and The Oddest Brontë

A new scholarly book with Brontë-related content:

Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives

by Sarah E. Maier

Palgrave Macmillan Cham

ISBN: 978-3-031-47294-7

February 2024

Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives examines the neo-Victorian themes and motifs currently appearing in young adult fiction—specifically addressing the themes of authorship, sexuality, and criminality in the context of the Victorian age in British and American cultures. This book explicates the complicated relationship between the Victorian past and the turn to Victorian modes of thought on literature, history, and morality. Additionally, Sarah E. Maier aims to determine if the appeal of neo-Victorian young adult fiction rests in or resists nostalgia, parody, and revision. Given the overwhelming prevalence of the Victorian in the young adult genres of biofiction, juvenile writings, gothic, sensation, mystery, and crime fiction, there is much to investigate in terms of the friction between the past and the present.

Including the chapters: 

Illustrative Genii: The Brontës’ Genius

Neo-Victorian young adult biofictions like The Glass Town Game (2017) by Catherynne Valente and Worlds of Ink and Shadow (2016) by Lena Coakley explore the fascinating Brontë family in fiction that collapses the space between their actual lives in Howarth and their imaginative lives in their juvenilia worlds. Two recent graphic novels—Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre (2009) by Glynnis Fawkes and Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës by Isabel Greenberg (2020)—further explore the conflation of juvenilian narratives with biographical suppositions. These biofictions enact a double perspective wherein the representation of the Brontës and their worlds inspires the young adult reader to consider their contemporary environment and the drive to create worlds that provide escape.

The Odd(est) Brontë: Portrait(s) of Emily as a Young Author

There is a paradoxical contrast between the quiet life of Emily Brontë and her passionate fiction offers no complete picture of the young woman in spite of the myriad biographies, legends, and myths about her life or the crushing number of critical responses to her fictions. Into this gap, neo-Victorian (re)visionings of and a (re)voicing of personal history allow for a reconsideration of Emily Brontë’s interests. To that end, Chap. 5, “The Odd(est) Brontë: Portrait(s) of Emily as a Young Author,” considers Always Emily (2014) by Michaela MacColl and The World Within: A Novel of Emily Brontë (2015) by Jane Eagland. Both biofictional narratives reconstruct an image of Brontë despite the scant archival evidence because, like adult readers, adolescents are interested in the who and why of writers’ lives; in addition, readers seek a greater insight into the famous characters that such an author may have invented in their texts.