Posted on 06/13/2005 4:56:19 PM PDT by sionnsar
What do Jane, Anne, Charlotte, Emily, Elizabeth, Noel, and Charlotte have in common? They are all daughters of English vicars and and they all capture the struggle of the human heart.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) - born at the parsonage of Steventon, in Hampshire, a village of which her father, the Rev. George Austen, was rector. Best known for her novels Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion and for her wit and social observations.
Anne Bronte (1820-1849) - The Bronte sisters were born to the Rev. Patrick Bronte at Thornton, near Bradford, but moved to the nearby township of Haworth when Charlotte, the eldest, was five. The children's formative years and their mature writing careers were developed in Haworth, amid the dramatic landscape of the surrounding moors. Anne is the author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey.
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)--author of the novels Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, she is known for her overwhelming passion.
Emily Bronte (1818-1848)--author of the grimly haunting novel Wuthering Heights and of the poetry "Old Stoic" and "Last Lines."
Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) - daughter the Rev. Nicolas Carter of Kent, perpetual curate of Deal Chapel. A poet, scholar, and translator, one of her most significant achievements is that, along with her fellow "Bluestockings", she made female intellectual endeavour respectable.
Noel Streatfeild (1895-1986)--born in Amberley, Sussex, she wrote 58 books for children. The most famous are the Shoes books: Ballet Shoes, Theater Shoes, Dancing Shoes, etc.
Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) - descended from English vicars in both her mother's and father's families, she was a best-selling author of her time, producing over 200 works, of which the novel The Heir of Redclyffe is most famous. She lived in Hampshire in Otterbourne. She has left on record a vivid account of the state of things that prevailed when Rev. John Keble was made vicar of the two parishes of Hursley and Otterbourne. She became one of the most faithful historians of the Tractarian controversy. She started an essay society for a group of young girls who were in need of more mental stimulation than the life of a Victorian daughter at home afforded them. They called her Mother Goose and they became the Goslings.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Fascinating, there was such incredible talent in the Bronte family, and Jane Austen will be a joy forever.
Just read The Heir of Redclyffe. It's an excellent read -- but I don't like the ending.
As an English Lit major, I was compelled to see the heaths and moors and literary sites when we were last in England. The Bronte home is tucked away in the middle of nowhere, and BOY! were they a strange lot. Never left home, the oddest of odd family relationships. I had loved their books, but I got a whole new and very strange take on the bunch of them.
That sort of complete isolation will play tricks with your head. West Yorkshire is STILL the literal middle of nowhere.
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