Month: January 2026

This weekend has been one to celebrate for Brontë lovers, and especially for fans of the youngest Brontë sister, for it has marked the 206th anniversary of the birth of Anne Brontë in Thornton, near Bradford. In recent years there has been a real resurgence in interest in Anne, and she is finally gaining the recognition she deserves as one of the great novelists of the nineteenth century. The Anne Brontë story began on January 17th 1820, in what is now the fabulous Brontë birthplace centre, in front of the fireplace you can see at the head of this post.

In today’s post we are going to look at some of the everyday things that were so important in Anne’s life, starting with this very special cradle. Rarely exhibited by the Brontë Parsonage Museum now, due to both its importance and fragility, this cradle was used to rock Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë among others. 

Anne was baptised on 25th March 1820 in what is now called Thornton’s ‘Old Bell Chapel’. Here is her baptismal entry, Interesting her father Patrick is listed as ‘Minister of Haworth’ although he and his family weren’t to move to their new parish until the following month.

Sometimes old houses hide remarkable treasures. These Brontë toys were found under parsonage floorboards lifted up during a 1949 renovation. As the final child in the family, Anne would undoubtedly have played with these alphabet blocks, and the toy iron and a tiny porcelain doll whose dress was made from a fragment of a dress worn by older sister Charlotte.

As I type this on a cold Sunday in January, looking out at a bank of Yorkshire fog, I look forward to a summer holiday by the sea. Anne Brontë loved the sea too, and annual visits to Scarborough were the highlights of her five years service as governess to the Robinson family of Thorp Green Hall near York. Anne loved to collect pebbles from the beach, and here is some of her pebble collection.

Talking of the Robinsons, there was one other thing she treasured from her time with the wealthy well-connected family: her pet spaniel Flossy which was gifted to Anne by the children she looked after. Anne drew two pictures of Flossy (Emily Brontë also produced one), but both were unfinished. One is shown below. Perhaps Flossy simply wouldn’t sit still long enough for Anne to complete the paintings?

Of course, the greatest thing Anne left to the world were her great books. In Agnes Grey and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë completed two very different books which deserve to be counted amongst the greatest novels of all time. Tenant in particular continues to astonish readers with its power and its messaging which is as relevant today as it has ever been.

If you’re a fellow Anne Brontë lover please do comment below and let me know why she means so much to you. I’ve also created a new House Of Brontë video over on my YouTube channel to explain just why I think Anne Brontë matters today:

Let’s all raise a glass or mug to toast this very special writer, and to say “Happy 206th birthday Anne Brontë!”. She faced great challenges in her life, but achieved great things and through it all she remained determined to do what she felt was right and proper – regardless of what criticisms might come her way. That, along with her novels and poems, is her lasting legacy. I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

Archbishops of Canterbury have been very much in the news recently, as the new Archbishop Sarah Mullally gave her official new year address after becoming the first woman to hold the post. Patrick and Charlotte Brontë themselves knew a future Archbishop of Canterbury, and in today’s post we’re going to look at his fascinating assessment of Charlotte and her character.

Charles Longley was Bishop of Ripon, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, when he was a guest of the Brontës visiting Haworth Parsonage in March 1853. It was he who gave the fascinating account of what happened to Patrick’s predecessor as Haworth’s curate Samuel Redhead:

‘in the case of Mr. Redhead, the inhabitants exercised their right of resistance and opposition and to such a point did they carry it, that they actually brought a Donkey into the church while Mr. Redhead was officiating and held up its head to stare him in the face – they then laid a plan to crush him to death in the vestry, by pushing a table against him as he was taking off his surplice and hanging it up, foiled in this for some reason or other they then turned out into the Churchyard where Mr. Redhead was going to perform a funeral and were determined to throw him into the grave and bury him alive.’

Being made Bishop of Ripon wasn’t the pinnacle of Charles Longley’s achievements, for he next became Bishop of Durham, followed by Archbishop of York and then, in 1860, he became the Archbishop of Canterbury – the great Canterbury Cathedral can be seen at the head of this post.

He also gave an account of Charlotte Brontë in two letters sent to his wife Caroline. The first was sent from Haworth and described the village and parsonage:

‘It snowed the whole way here – becoming a storm when I got within a mile of this place. It is a curious spot… I had to cross a great deal of moor to get to it… Old Mr Brontë called it “that dismal hill – that fearful precipice”… In driving up to the parsonage, I had to go thro’ so narrow, dent-like a street that I thought  the carriage would have stuck – arrived however at the Parsonage I found Mr Brontë in a very comfortable room and his sight much restored, cheerful. 

His daughter appeared soon after – the only surviving child of six – but before I had seen her, I had seen a very fine crayon full sized portrait of her by Richmond, which someone presented to her father. You have heard her person described – she is small, but with marked features but quite self possessed. Her conversation is interesting and agreeable and she does not assume the Blue at all – we had a young clergyman at supper here who would talk to her about her books – but she soon gave him to understand she did not like this subject on all occasions.’

Two days later Bishop Longley had moved on to Wilsden, and he wrote to his wife again on a subject which seemed to have grabbed his attention: Charlotte Brontë:

‘She is not the least like the MIss Barkers – she has none of that stamp of genius in her countenance which they undoubtedly bear about them – she has none of that mark of inward inspiration (if I may be allowed thus to use the term) which one cannot but read in their expression. None of that close reserve, and difficulty of access in conversation which I at any rate found in them. She looks like a clever little boy, well-mannered, ready in conversation, just and sensible in her remarks which indicate thoughts and reflexions, active in her household duties, an excellent daughter, as her father assured me, without any of the abstractions of genius. Without making any fuss, she was exceedingly attentive to my comfort – would go up to my room and stir the fire, and see that all was ready for me before I went up for my morning writing before breakfast. Her young clerical neighbours speak of her as satirical and I cannot help suspecting that they have a little tournament with her now and then – and that she took revenge on them in Shirley.’

As the Archbishop, and most people in the area, knew, Charlotte had used her novel Shirley to give unflattering, but not mean, portraits of many of the local curates she knew – including her future husband Arthur Bell Nicholls. These fascinating letters get to the heart of what Charlotte Brontë was like after she found fame as an author – she was a great genius, but she was also greatly unassuming and preferred the everyday matters of domestic life to talking about her own novels and talents.

I hope you aren’t snowed in, and that you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

The new year has arrived, and we now enter the twelfth year of my Anne Brontë, and Brontë family, blog. Thank you again for all the great comments over the last few weeks, I’m always happy to read them, and I have big plans for this blog over the coming year. Today we are going to look at the man at the centre of a monumental event in the Brontë story on this day in 1844.

How has your new year started? Are you easing your way in slowly but surely, or maybe getting ready for a return to work tomorrow (my commiserations)? In 1846 Emily Brontë opened the year in dramatic fashion, as on the 2nd of January she penned what many see as her poetic masterpiece: “No Coward Soul Is Mine”. Here is Emily’s manuscript version of the poem, and she’s helpfully dated it for us:

The start of the year 1844 saw a dramatic turn in events for Charlotte Brontë, for it was on 1st January of that year that she set sail and ended her near two year stint at the Pensionnat Heger school in Brussels (first as a pupil and then as a teacher). The Heger family can be seen at the head of this post. Charlotte arrived back in Haworth on 3rd January, and would never see Belgium again. 

Charlotte returned with a heavy heart, but for me it’s quite clear that her unrequited love for Monsieur Constantin Heger heavily influenced the novels she would soon write. It’s clear that Heger was a complex man – he could be a stern man, but did he treat Charlotte Brontë badly, did he trifle with her affections, or was he simply the unwilling target of a student then colleague’s affections? The truth is we will never know, but we get a glimpse of him in an account given to the Carluke and Lanark Gazette on 16th January 1915. In it, a Mrs O’ Brien, looking back at her life, recalls a friend with a Brontë connection and who had her own time at the Pensionnat Heger some years after Charlotte Brontë had left. I reproduce it below:

‘Mrs. O’Brien writes: Only the other day a French friend was telling me that her whole life was influenced by Charlotte Brontë. This friend was not born when Charlotte Brontë lived, and I was puzzled to find the connecting-link between them. My friend explained to me that when she left the French convent where she was educated she found a situation in a Belgian school. She was getting on happily when an English girl who was discontented with her surroundings told her that she shared Charlotte Brontë’s opinions of the Belgians. Charlotte Brontë! The name had not penetrated the French convent school library. The English girl was indignant. “You never heard of Charlotte Brontë! You don’t know that she lived here in this very place, and suffered as I am suffering.”

It was the famous school which Charlotte described in Villette, and when she had read it she was intensely miserable. In those days, Mme. Heger was still ruling, and her husband, when questioned as to his famous pupil, replied with insufferable vanity that he had liked his English eleve [tr: ‘pupil’], and she had responded with a warmer feeling. The tone of the reply disgusted my friend, both with the speaker and with her surroundings. Her heart ached at the thought of what Charlotte Brontë had suffered in that place, at the hands of those people, who had prospered and done well. The feeling grew so acute that it seemed to her the place was haunted. She decided to leave it and accept a worse situation where her mind was at peace.”

I hope you all enjoyed that almost first hand account of Monsieur Heger, and that you are also at peace even in the midst of January – surely the longest month in the year, but lighter and longer days are coming. I also hope you can join me again next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

We’ve made it to 2026 so Happy New Year to you and your loved ones, and to all who have done so much to support this blog throughout the years, and to support me! It’s a time of change and a time of opportunity for us all, just as it was for Charlotte Brontë on this day in 1844.

January 1st of that year saw Charlotte Brontë leave Brussels after nearly two years in Belgium (interrupted by a brief return to Haworth after Aunt Branwell’s death). In her hands Charlotte carried a diploma given to her by Constantin Heger certifying that she had completed her studies. It was hoped that she, supported by sisters Emily and Anne Brontë, would now be able to open a school in Haworth or elsewhere, but in fact the lessons learnt in Brussels would lead to a very different future for them all. There can be no doubt that the shadow of Charlotte’s unrequited love for Monsieur Heger influenced much of her writing, and led directly to the great novels of the Brontë sisters we know and love today. The diploma itself is lost, but we still have the envelope it was contained in.

I’m now in the twelfth year of writing this blog, and in that time my posts have received millions of views. It’s such a privilege and honour to share my love of the Brontës with so many people who feel the same about these brilliant writers and brilliant human beings. There’s always something new to write about, and I have big plans for this blog in the coming year – but more on that as January progresses. For now I want to wish you all a very very happy and healthy new year, and I leave you with a copy of Auld Lang Syne transcribed in Anne Brontë’s own handwriting: