Brontë Parsonage Museum
The Brontë Parsonage Museum is run by the Brontë Society in honor of the Brontë sisters Charlotte , Emily and Anne . It is located in the old rectory in Haworth , West Yorkshire, England, the former home of the Brontë family, where the sisters lived much of their lives and where most of their famous novels were written.
The Brontë Society, one of the oldest literary societies in the English-speaking world, is a registered foundation. Its members support the preservation of the museum and the library holdings. The Brontë Parsonage is classified as Grade I on the English National Monument List because of its special importance .
history
The rectory was built in 1778/1779. In 1820 Patrick Brontë took over the pastorate at St Michael and All Angels' Church in Haworth and moved into the rectory with his wife Maria and their six children. It became the family's home for the rest of their lives, and the moorland around Haworth greatly influenced the works of Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne. Patrick Brontë was a self-published author of lyric and fictional literature, which is why his children were used to reading their last names on books in Parsonage from an early age.
On September 15, 1821, the mother, Maria Brontë, died of cancer and her unmarried sister Elizabeth Branwell moved to Haworth to take over the household from now on. In 1824 the four eldest sisters left Haworth and attended the girls 'boarding school for pastors' daughters in Cowan Bridge , near Kirkby Lonsdale . Eleven-year-old Maria was soon sent back due to an illness and died in May 1825 in Parsonage. Shortly afterwards, ten-year-old Elizabeth also returned home and died on June 15.
In 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne used part of their Aunt Branwell's inheritance to fund the publication of their poems, hiding their true identities behind the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Poems was published by Aylott and Jones, but only two copies were sold. Charlotte's first attempt at a novel, The Professor , was initially rejected by several publishing houses until Smith, Elder & Co., although not accepting the work, encouraged Charlotte to send them her next novel, Jane Eyre . Jane Eyre was adopted and published on October 19, 1847. Sturmhöhe and Agnes Gray were published as a three-part series in December 1847 by the London publisher Thomas Cautley Newby. After the publication of Anne's second novel, The Lady of Wildfell Hall , Charlotte and Anne were forced to confess their true identities. Her brother Branwell, who was meanwhile addicted to alcohol and opium, fell ill with tubercosis and died surprisingly on September 24, 1848 at the age of 31. Emily also contracted the disease and was never to leave the house after Branwell's funeral. She died on December 19, 1848 at the age of 30. Anne, too, had tuberculosis and was taken to Scarborough for cure , but died four days after her arrival on May 28, 1849, at the age of 29. On Anne's tombstone, the age of death is wrongly stated as 28.
Charlotte finished her novel Shirley , which she began before Branwell's death and which was published in October 1849. Her last novel, Villette , was published in 1853. On June 29, 1854, Charlotte married her father's vicar, Arthur Bell Nicholls, at St Michael and All Angels' Church in Haworth. Charlotte died on March 31, 1855, a few months pregnant at the time, three weeks before her 39th birthday. Patrick Brontë lived under the care of his son-in-law in Parsonage for another six years until he died on June 7, 1861 at the age of 84.
The Brontë Society
After Patrick Brontë's death in 1861, the interior of the rectory was auctioned. Friends and service personnel sold souvenirs and letters. At a meeting in 1893, the Bradford Library's chief librarian suggested collecting memorabilia, letters and documents related to the Brontës and keeping them for posterity. The Brontë Society was formed at a public meeting and a collection of Brontëana, i.e. H. Memorabilia of the Brontës has started. In 1895 this collection was large enough to be exhibited in a museum on the upper floor of the Yorkshire Penny Bank in Haworth. The Brontë Society had 260 members and approximately 10,000 visitors came to the museum in the first year. Sir James Roberts bought the Haworth Parsonage in 1928 for £ 3,000. He turned it into a museum and donated it to the Brontë Society. In 1926, Henry Bonnell from Philadelphia bequeathed his personal collection to the Brontë Society, which was added to the exhibition when the Parsonage Museum opened, making it accessible to Brontë researchers. The collection of the Brontë Parsonage Museum has grown steadily since its opening through various loans. The Brontë Society now has around 2000 members.
The mahogany desk on which Charlotte wrote her novels had been privately owned for more than a century. It was purchased in 2009 from an anonymous donor for £ 20,000 and given to the Parsonage Museum in 2011.
Relation to popular culture
In 1970, in the film Die Eisenbahnkinder (The Railway Children), the Parsonage acted as the setting for the home of Dr. Forrest.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Haworth Parsonage (Bronte Museum) (Grade I) [1313933] ( English ) In: National Heritage List for England . Historic England . Retrieved January 1, 2017.
- ^ The Full Brontë . Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
- ^ Brontë Parsonage . Haworth Village. Archived from the original on April 16, 2016. Retrieved on April 18, 2016.
- ↑ 11 things you didn't know about the Brontës . In: The Telegraph , October 7, 2015. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
- ^ History . Brontë Parsonage Museum. Retrieved September 1, 2015.
- ^ Bronte writing desk comes home to Haworth Parsonage . In: BBC News , BBC, May 24, 2011. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
- ^ The Railway Children Walk (PDF) Bradford Council. Retrieved November 22, 2017.