The Mother of the Brontës
When Maria Met Patrick
by Sharon Wright
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 31 Jul 2019 | Archive Date 9 Jul 2019
Pen & Sword | Pen & Sword History
Talking about this book? Use #TheMotherOfTheBrontës #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
At long last, the untold story of the mysterious Mrs Brontë. They were from different lands, different classes, different worlds almost. The chances of Cornish gentlewoman Maria Branwell even meeting the poor Irish curate Patrick Brontë in Regency England, let alone falling passionately in love, were remote. Yet Maria and Patrick did meet, making a life together as devoted lovers and doting parents in the heartland of the industrial revolution. An unlikely romance and novel wedding were soon followed by the birth of six children. They included Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, the most gifted literary siblings the world has ever known. Her children inherited her intelligence and wit and wrote masterpieces such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Yet Maria has remained an enigma while the fame of her family spread across the world. It is time to bring her out of the shadows, along with her overlooked contribution to the Brontë genius. Untimely death stalked Maria as it was to stalk all her children. But first there was her fascinating life’s story, told here for the first time by Sharon Wright.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781526738486 |
| PRICE | £19.99 (GBP) |
Links
Featured Reviews
Rebecca B, Educator
As a huge fan of the Brontes and was thrilled to get an ARC of this to read. The author Sharon Wright here tackles the life of possibly the most mysterious of the Brontes, Maria Branwell. The research behind this book is clearly excellent and from the first there is a lot of detail and the chapters are well paced. It starts by dealing with Marias early family life in Penzance through her romance with Patrick, to her untimely death, as the mother of 6 small children in Haworth. The narrative is filled with little gems such as the precise book Maria bought on a shopping trip in 1810 and this helps the reader place Marias life in its wider context.
The book also deals quite extensively with the political and social context of the times. Which is both helpful and distracting. For example the author speculates regarding the possible involvement of Maria's father in smuggling without fully exploring the issue, and the positIon of Cornwall within the French Wars without discussing what this meant.
While I found this background information interesting I also found it a distraction, and especially in the beginning felt that Maria herself got a little lost.
I found the second half of the book to be much stronger, ‘seeing’ Maria in her element as a young mother in Thornton was fascinating and added a new perspective to the typical Bronte narrative. The chapter dealing with Maria’s death I found difficult to read, the author writes them in harrowing detail and her families grief is palpable.
All in all, I enjoyed this book very much and it adds much to the understanding of the Bronte story.
I was given an ARC by NetGalley, all opinions are my own.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
