60 Fun Facts About Brontë Family

In which Yorkshire village were Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne born before the 1820 move to Haworth?

The birthplace near Bradford is a place of pilgrimage; the Haworth parsonage draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Under what male pseudonyms did Charlotte, Emily and Anne publish?

The initials matched their own; the surname Bell may have come from their father's curate Arthur Bell Nicholls.

What was the original Irish family surname before Patrick Brontë changed the spelling?

It anglicised the clan name Ó Pronntaigh, hereditary scribes of Fermanagh; Patrick added the diaeresis to show two syllables.

One theory says Patrick chose 'Brontë' to link himself with which admiral, who was Duke of Bronte?

Biographer Clement Shorter proposed the idea in 1896.

Where was Patrick Brontë born in 1777?

One of ten children of a poor family, he won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge.

How many children did Patrick and Maria Brontë have?

Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest, died in childhood in 1825.

Where did the children's mother, Maria, come from?

She died of cancer in 1821 aged 38, and her sister Elizabeth came from Penzance to raise the children.

Who was 'Aunt Branwell'?

A Methodist from Penzance, she left the girls £900 in her will, which freed them from teaching and governess work.

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

It became Lowood in Jane Eyre, and Maria inspired the saintly Helen Burns.

Which real headmaster inspired the tyrannical Mr Brocklehurst of Jane Eyre?

He managed the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in the Brontës' time.

What gift to the only son in June 1826 sparked the children's imaginary worlds?

They called them the Young Men and gave them names.

What was the name of the imaginary African kingdom the children invented in 1827?

Charlotte and Branwell later developed it into the Empire of Angria.

Which imaginary island continent, ruled by a woman, did Emily and Anne create?

They began it after Charlotte left for school in 1831; Emily wrote Gondal poems all her life.

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

She left after a year to teach Emily and Anne at home.

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

She had written announcing her ambition 'to be forever known'.

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

Charlotte fell in love with the married director, Constantin Héger, who inspired Rochester and The Professor.

What happened to Charlotte's love letters to Constantin Héger?

His children gave them to the British Museum and they were printed in 1913.

How many copies did the sisters' 1846 collection of poems, published under pen names, sell in its first year?

Charlotte sent copies to Wordsworth, Tennyson and De Quincey anyway.

Which Charlotte Brontë novel, rejected before Jane Eyre, was published only after her death?

It finally appeared in 1857.

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

Patrick was recovering from a cataract operation performed without anaesthetic.

Which London firm published Jane Eyre on 19 October 1847?

It appeared under the name Currer Bell.

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

Charlotte later met and befriended him in London.

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

Bertha Mason is the madwoman in the attic; Jean Rhys told her story in Wide Sargasso Sea.

Complete Jane Eyre's famous line: 'Reader, I...'

The couple settle at Ferndean Manor.

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

Jane's childhood was spent at Gateshead with the Reed family.

Which 1966 novel by Jean Rhys retells the story of Rochester's first wife?

It is the best-known reimagining of Jane Eyre.

Emily Brontë wrote how many novels?

Wuthering Heights, published as by Ellis Bell in 1847, was the only one.

From which city does Mr Earnshaw bring home the orphan Heathcliff?

The dark-featured foundling is spoiled by his adoptive father and hated by his adoptive brother Hindley.

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

The novel uses five or six narrators in all.

What is the name of the Lintons' house, the second estate in Wuthering Heights?

Ponden Hall near Haworth, which Emily often visited, is said to have inspired it.

Which ruined farmhouse near Haworth did Ellen Nussey suggest as the model for Wuthering Heights?

High Sunderland Hall near Halifax, now demolished, is another candidate.

Who starred as Heathcliff in William Wyler's famous 1939 film of Wuthering Heights?

Merle Oberon played Cathy.

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

She wrote it in one evening at 18 and later found she shared a birthday with Emily Brontë.

What did Emily reputedly say when refusing medical help as she died of tuberculosis in 1848?

She was 30; Branwell had died that September.

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

Twenty-nine of her drawings and paintings survive.

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

She worked for the Inghams at Blake Hall and the Robinsons at Thorp Green.

Agnes Grey was first published by Thomas Newby in the same three-volume set as a novel by which sister?

Emily's book filled the first two volumes and Anne's the third.

Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) is regarded as an early novel of what kind?

Its heroine Helen Graham flees an alcoholic husband; May Sinclair said her slammed bedroom door was slammed 'in the face of society'.

What did Charlotte do to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall after Anne's death?

She thought the book 'a mistake', which damaged Anne's reputation for decades.

Which trait is NOT one Arthur Huntingdon of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is said to share with Branwell?

Branwell may also have fathered a child who died at birth.

In which seaside town did Anne die in May 1849, and where is she buried?

Charlotte chose to 'lay the flower where it had fallen'; Anne is the only sibling not buried at Haworth.

What did Branwell famously do to his group portrait of his three sisters?

The picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

Branwell was dismissed as tutor from Thorp Green Hall in 1845 amid an affair with whom?

He sank into alcohol and laudanum and died in 1848 aged 31.

What job did Branwell hold at Luddendenfoot station from 1841?

He was promoted to clerk in charge on a salary of £130.

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

She wrote it while all three of her remaining siblings died within eight months.

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

Lucy Snowe teaches at a girls' school in Villette, a version of Brussels; the kingdom is called Labassecour.

Whom did Charlotte marry in June 1854?

Patrick took a long time to give his consent.

What complication of pregnancy may have contributed to Charlotte's death in March 1855?

Tuberculosis was the recorded cause; she was 38 and had married the year before.

Who wrote the first biography of Charlotte, published in 1857 at Patrick's request?

The first edition was withdrawn after slander complaints and reissued censored.

Per Gaskell, what did Patrick Brontë do from the parsonage window daily 'to work off his volcanic wrath'?

Patrick strenuously denied it, and the claim that he denied his children meat.

How old was Patrick Brontë when he died in 1861, having outlived all six of his children?

He had published his own Cottage Poems back in 1811.

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

The village is about three miles south-west of Keighley in the Pennines.

Who bought Haworth Parsonage in 1928 for £3,000 and gave it to the Brontë Society?

The society, founded after an 1893 meeting in Bradford, is one of the oldest literary societies in the English-speaking world.

Which two novelists' works are named as influences on the Brontë children's juvenile writing?

Mary Shelley's dystopian The Last Man was one of the works.

At which Halifax school did Emily Brontë teach in 1838, enduring a seventeen-hour working day?

She said she preferred the school dog to her pupils, and her health suffered until she went home.

Which family employed Anne Brontë as governess at Blake Hall near Mirfield in 1839?

She was nineteen; the wealthy family had five young children, the eldest only six.

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

Nussey was the brother of her school friend Ellen; Charlotte eventually married curate Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854.

In which year was the Brontë Society founded after a meeting called by Bradford's chief librarian?

By 1895 its collection was displayed above the Yorkshire Penny Bank in Haworth and drew 10,000 visitors in a year.

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

The parsonage was built in 1778–79 and is Grade I listed.

How much did an anonymous donor pay in 2009 for Charlotte's mahogany writing desk, given to the museum in 2011?

The desk had been in private collections for more than a century.