60 Fun Facts About Brontë Family

In which Yorkshire village were Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë born, before the family moved to Haworth?

Thornton: the house where they and Branwell were born spent years as a butcher's shop and then a cafe. After a community fundraising campaign bought it, the house opened as a museum in 2025.

Charlotte Brontë said the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were chosen because they were what?

Not clearly male or female: Charlotte wrote that the sisters scrupled to take names 'positively masculine' yet did not want to declare themselves women, because authoresses were 'looked on with prejudice'.

Patrick Brontë, a poor farmer's son, entered which university in 1802 at the age of 25?

Cambridge: he arrived at St John's College as Patrick Brunty, a former village schoolmaster and tutor, and it was there that he began to sign himself Brontë.

One theory says Patrick Brontë chose his new surname to echo which admiral, who was Duke of Bronte?

Horatio Nelson was made Duke of Bronte in 1799 by the King of Naples and Sicily, a reward for defending his throne, and Patrick is said to have admired him. Why he really changed the spelling is unknown.

Although the Brontës are tied to Yorkshire, their father Patrick was born in which country?

Ireland: Patrick was born in County Down on St Patrick's Day 1777, one of ten children of a family so poor that he had to make his own way from his teens.

Which Jane Eyre character did Charlotte Brontë base on Maria, the eldest of the six Brontë children, who died aged 11?

Helen Burns. Like Maria, Helen is punished again and again by one teacher and dies of consumption; Charlotte's first biographer called her 'as exact a transcript' of Maria as Charlotte could give.

Where was Maria Branwell, the mother of the Brontë children, born and raised?

Penzance, Cornwall. Maria came north in 1812 to visit an uncle near Leeds, met the clergyman Patrick Brontë there, and the two were wed that December.

After Maria Brontë died in 1821, which relative moved into Haworth Parsonage to help raise her six children?

Her elder sister. Elizabeth Branwell came to nurse Maria and stayed for 21 years as 'Aunt Branwell', running the household until she died and leaving her savings to her nieces.

The two eldest Brontë sisters died in 1825 after attending which harsh boarding school?

Cowan Bridge. Patrick brought Charlotte and Emily home from the cheap school for clergy daughters once their sisters fell ill; Charlotte later rebuilt it as Lowood in Jane Eyre.

The Reverend William Carus Wilson, founder of a school the Brontë sisters attended, was the model for which Jane Eyre character?

Mr Brocklehurst. Charlotte, a pupil at eight, drew him as the preacher who keeps Lowood's girls cold and hungry; when her biography named the model, Carus Wilson and his friends threatened to sue.

What gift from Patrick Brontë to his son Branwell in June 1826 sparked the children's imaginary worlds?

Twelve wooden soldiers. Patrick brought them back from Leeds, and next morning each child seized one to name and keep, the start of years of shared stories written in tiny handmade books.

Charlotte Brontë made which real commander the hero of her childhood Glass Town stories?

The Duke of Wellington. Charlotte claimed him as her own hero while Branwell took Bonaparte, and her tales soon starred the Duke's two sons in an African colony the children invented.

Which imaginary land did Emily and Anne Brontë invent as children and keep writing about as adults?

Gondal. The sisters never outgrew it: on a trip to York in 1845, both in their twenties, they spent the journey playing its characters, as Emily's diary paper records.

At which Mirfield school did Charlotte Brontë study in 1831, meeting lifelong friends Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor?

Roe Head. Charlotte came back in 1835 as a teacher, bringing Emily as a pupil; Emily was so homesick that she went home within months and Anne took her place.

Which Poet Laureate told young Charlotte Brontë literature 'cannot be the business of a woman's life'?

Robert Southey. Charlotte thanked him and promised she would 'never more feel ambitious to see my name in print'; a decade later Jane Eyre made her famous.

In which city did Charlotte and Emily Brontë study at the Héger Pensionnat in 1842?

Brussels. After six months the school offered to keep both sisters on without fees if they would teach: Charlotte took the English classes and Emily taught music.

What became of Charlotte Brontë's letters to Constantin Héger?

His wife pieced the torn pages together. Héger had ripped most of the letters up; she stitched them and kept them in secret, and in 1913 their son gave the four that survive to the British Museum.

How many copies did the Brontë sisters' 1846 book of poems sell in its first year?

Two. Charlotte told one author that only the publisher knew 'by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two', and sent him one of the unsold copies as a present.

Which Brontë novel, rejected before Jane Eyre, was published only after its author's death?

The Professor. After several publishers refused it, Charlotte reworked its story of a teacher abroad into Villette; her widower saw the original into print two years after her death.

Where was Charlotte Brontë when she began writing Jane Eyre in August 1846?

At her father's bedside in Manchester. Patrick, nearly blind, had a cataract removed there and lay bandaged in a dark room; her first novel came back rejected on the day of the operation, and she began another.

Which London firm published Jane Eyre in October 1847?

Smith, Elder & Co. The firm had turned down her first novel so courteously that she sent it Jane Eyre instead, and the book was in print within two months.

To which novelist was the second edition of Jane Eyre dedicated?

William Makepeace Thackeray. She admired him above every living writer but knew nothing of his life and had never met him; the tribute set readers guessing afresh about who the unknown author was.

Which secret is revealed at Jane Eyre's wedding to Rochester?

He already has a wife, Bertha. A lawyer halts the service by declaring 'the existence of an impediment', and Rochester marches the whole party home to show them the woman he keeps locked upstairs.

Which two words complete Jane Eyre's famous line 'Reader, I …'?

Married him. 'Reader, I married him' opens the final chapter, and after all the novel's drama it is 'a quiet wedding', with only the parson and the clerk present.

In Jane Eyre, what is the name of Rochester's house, where Jane teaches the French girl Adèle?

Thornfield Hall. Jane arrives assuming it belongs to the kindly Mrs Fairfax, who is in fact only looking after it for its absent master; by the novel's end the house is a burnt-out ruin.

Which 1966 novel by Jean Rhys is a prequel to Jane Eyre?

Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys, who grew up in Dominica, renames Brontë's 'madwoman in the attic' Antoinette Cosway and gives her a girlhood in 1830s Jamaica; it was her first novel in 27 years.

How many novels did Emily Brontë write?

One. Wuthering Heights appeared in December 1847 and Emily died a year later; in 1850 Charlotte edited a new edition, conceding in her preface that to outsiders it 'must appear a rude and strange production'.

In Wuthering Heights, from which city does Mr Earnshaw bring home the orphan Heathcliff?

Liverpool. Mr Earnshaw walks the sixty miles each way and comes home with the starving child inside his greatcoat, the fiddle he had promised his son crushed to pieces.

Who tells most of the story of Wuthering Heights to the tenant Mr Lockwood?

Nelly Dean, the housekeeper. She grew up beside the Earnshaw children and has served both families, so she can give Lockwood the whole history from the inside while he is laid up ill.

In Wuthering Heights, what is the name of the Linton family's refined house down in the valley?

Thrushcross Grange. Cathy and Heathcliff creep up to spy on its drawing room, the Lintons' dog seizes her ankle, and her five weeks recovering there send her home a young lady.

Which ruin on the moors above Haworth is popularly credited as the inspiration for the house Wuthering Heights?

Top Withens. The farmhouse never matched Emily's description of the Earnshaws' home, as a plaque on the ruin admits; it is the bleak hilltop setting that fits the novel.

Who played Heathcliff in William Wyler's 1939 film of Wuthering Heights?

Laurence Olivier. The film tells only about half of the novel's 34 chapters, but it turned the British stage actor into an international star and brought his first Oscar nomination.

Kate Bush's 1978 hit 'Wuthering Heights' made her the first woman to top the UK chart with what?

An entirely self-written song. Bush wrote it in a few hours one night at 18, after catching the end of a BBC adaptation, and later found that she shares Emily Brontë's birthday, 30 July.

What did the dying Emily Brontë reputedly say when refusing medical help?

She would have 'no poisoning doctor' near her. Emily refused all treatment for weeks; on her last morning she whispered that she would see a doctor now, and by two o'clock she was dead.

What was the name of Emily Brontë's fierce dog, whose portrait she painted in watercolour?

Keeper. At Emily's funeral in 1848 he joined the family as a mourner and walked into the church with them, then lay howling at her bedroom door for days.

Anne Brontë's first novel Agnes Grey draws on her own experience in what job?

Governess. Anne spent five years as one in two wealthy households, and the novel's spoiled, unruly pupils are drawn from the children she struggled to control.

Why did Charlotte and Anne Brontë rush to London in July 1848?

To prove they were separate authors. Anne's publisher had sold her new novel abroad as the work of the author of Jane Eyre, so the two set off that very day and presented themselves at Charlotte's publisher in person.

Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) is often called one of the first novels of what kind?

Feminist. Its heroine walks out on an abusive husband and supports her son by selling her paintings, at a time when leaving with their child broke English law as well as convention.

What did Charlotte Brontë do about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall after her sister Anne died?

Blocked its republication. Charlotte told her publisher the novel was hardly 'desirable to preserve' and its choice of subject 'a mistake', a verdict that left Anne in her sisters' shadow for generations.

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, what destroys Arthur Huntingdon, a husband often said to be modelled on Branwell Brontë?

Heavy drinking. Charlotte wrote that Anne had watched 'near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused' and felt it a duty to set down every detail as a warning to others.

In which seaside town did Anne Brontë die in May 1849?

Scarborough. Anne loved the resort from summers there with her employers and hoped its sea air might save her; she died four days after leaving home, and Charlotte chose 'to lay the flower in the place where it had fallen'.

What is Branwell Brontë thought to have done to his portrait of his sisters?

Painted himself out, leaving a pillar. A ghostly figure now shows through the fading paint; the portrait was presumed lost until 1914, when it went on show at the National Portrait Gallery.

Branwell Brontë lost his post as a tutor in 1845 over a reported affair with whom?

His employer's wife, Mrs Robinson. Branwell said she loved him and would marry him once widowed; she never did, and the first biography of Charlotte had to be withdrawn after repeating his story.

What job did Branwell Brontë hold at Luddendenfoot station from 1841?

Railway clerk. As 'clerk in charge' he ran the small station with a single porter; when an audit found the accounts short in 1842 he was dismissed, though the porter had probably taken the money.

Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley (1849) is set against which historical backdrop?

The Luddite uprisings. The mill attack in the novel follows the real 1812 assault on Rawfolds Mill, a walk from Charlotte's old school; she wrote on as her last three siblings died within eight months.

Charlotte Brontë's 1853 novel Villette is set in a fictional kingdom modelled on which country?

Belgium. Charlotte renamed it Labassecour, from the French for farmyard, and reworked into the novel an earlier manuscript that publishers had refused years before.

Whom did Charlotte Brontë marry in June 1854?

Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate. Patrick furiously refused the first proposal in 1852; he gave way by 1854 but stayed home from the wedding, so Charlotte's old schoolmistress gave her away.

Charlotte Brontë died in 1855 while expecting her first child; which condition of pregnancy is thought to have fatally weakened her?

Severe morning sickness. Doctors now call it hyperemesis gravidarum: for weeks Charlotte could keep down neither food nor water, though her death certificate blamed consumption.

Who wrote The Life of Charlotte Brontë, the 1857 biography that her father Patrick asked for?

Elizabeth Gaskell. A fellow novelist and friend, she printed only two extracts from Charlotte's letters to Héger, yet still had to withdraw and revise the book after threats of legal action.

By one early biographer's account, what did Patrick Brontë do to vent his anger without saying a word?

Fired his gun. Patrick denied the tale and blamed a former servant's gossip, though he had carried a loaded pistol for protection ever since the mill riots of 1812.

Patrick Brontë, who outlived all six of his children, called for an 1850 inquiry into what in Haworth?

Its drains and water supply. The inspector found open sewers and an overcrowded graveyard seeping into the drinking water; about 41 per cent of Haworth's children were dying before the age of six.

Which preserved steam line serves Haworth and helps make it a tourist destination?

Keighley and Worth Valley. British Rail ran its last passenger train on the branch at the end of 1961; local enthusiasts formed a society, bought the line and reopened it in 1968 as one of Britain's first heritage railways.

In 2024 Westminster Abbey fixed what mistake on the Brontë sisters' memorial in Poets' Corner?

The ë was missing its dots. The mason left them off when the tablet was cut in 1939, and the name stayed misspelled for 85 years until a Brontë biographer asked the Abbey to add them.

Which Romantic poet's heroes shaped the Brontës' childhood tales and, later, Heathcliff and Rochester?

Lord Byron. Charlotte and Branwell filled their Angrian tales with proud, sinful Byronic heroes; Charlotte urged a school friend to read him too, but to skip Don Juan.

At which school near Halifax did the young Emily Brontë teach, enduring a seventeen-hour working day?

Law Hill. Charlotte wrote in alarm of 'hard labour from six in the morning to eleven at night' and called it slavery; Emily stood it for about six months before coming home.

How did Anne Brontë's first post, with the wealthy Ingham family at Blake Hall, come to an end?

She was dismissed. Forbidden to punish the Inghams' unruly, overindulged children, Anne could not keep them in order and lasted less than a year.

Whose 1839 marriage proposal did Charlotte Brontë decline, explaining herself in a letter to his sister?

Henry Nussey. Charlotte told his sister she could not marry without 'that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him'; the earnest clergyman is said to have lent something to St John Rivers in Jane Eyre.

Where did the Brontë Society open its first museum in 1895, long before it owned the Parsonage?

Above a bank in Haworth. The Society, founded in 1893, filled a room over the Yorkshire Penny Bank with relics; in 1928 Sir James Roberts bought the family's old home and gave it to the Society as a permanent museum.

In which 1970 film did Haworth Parsonage appear as the home of Dr Forrest?

The Railway Children. Volunteers had reopened the abandoned branch line through Haworth only two years earlier; the film was shot along it, with the Brontës' old home standing in for the doctor's house.

Which 2016 BBC drama by Sally Wainwright tells how the Brontë sisters became published novelists?

To Walk Invisible. The title is Charlotte's own phrase: after a clergyman failed to recognise her as a famous author, she asked what writer 'would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible'.