Branwell Brontë

Patrick Branwell Brontë was born 26th June 1817. The fourth and only son of the six Brontë children, as such it was always intended that of the family he should be encouraged in his chosen career of writer and artist. But sadly, it wasn’t to be. After the early deaths of his mother and elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth, his life, already haunted by bereavement and disease would be further plagued by depression, alcoholism and numerous occupational set backs.

Ironically, where their fading brother was destined to go unpublished, under the assumed name Bell, (Currer, Charlotte; Ellis, Emily; and Acton, Anne) behind their brother’s back, secretly flourished the prestigious talents of his three surviving sisters. The likes of ‘Jane Eyre’ prospering amongst volumes of Branwell’s confused and fragmentary literary efforts set in his imaginary world of ‘Angria’ and starring his swashbuckling alter-ego ‘Northangerland’. (Pictured above)

For all that, of what the rest of his family were entirely unaware, was the dawn of Branwell’s foremost brainchild; a vivid account of his own disheartening love story. A book that in order to see completed, in the very last days of his life, he literally hurled across the centuries.

Branwell Brontë lived at the Parsonage, in Haworth Village, West Yorkshire. He died aged 31 in September 1848. Not until 2015 would time finally see published this, his first and part-posthumous novel, ‘Push Me Away’.