Branwell Brontë Books

The poems of Branwell Bronte offer a poignant look inside the unfairly overlooked, talented brother of the famous Bronte sisters. His earlier poems tell of the childhood games, plays, and fantasies that were an indelible influence on the later works of Anne, Emily and Charlotte. His later, sadder poems are arguably as fine as his sister Emily's. Well worth a look!

This was a good book about an adolescent dealing with the pressures of life, and being a teenager. He faced many obstacles, and was forced to make many decisions, and he learned a lot from them. He had a great character, and it was fun to read about him.

The main character, a young boy, is having a hard time with life. His sister is an over-achiever, and he doesn't really like school, so living up to peoples' expectations has always presented conflicts in his life. He experiments with drugs and alcohol like many teenagers today. He starts hanging around people who aren't good influences, and it has a big effect on his life and the decisions he was making at that point in time. It's a pretty good book, and I think there are many people who could identify with it.

This book is an excellent introduction, for the young and old, into the world of the Brontes. It's a slim volume full of wonderful photographs that, if nothing else, will serve to make the reader want to learn more about this family. Not just about the three daughters who published novels, but about the two men in the family who didn't. And you'll also want to know more about Tabby the maid. In the end, this book will lead you to read other books about the Brontes. And maybe, if you haven't already, you'll read all that they wrote and drew.

This is one of two works I've read about the puzzling life of Branwell Bronte, and this is the one you should read first. You'll enjoy it, and appreciate the more recent novel by Douglas A. Martin all the more for having this background beforehand.

Considering Du Maurier has an innate tendency to dramatize and take her readers above and beyond the clouds, I'm just glad she took the time to write this book. I find her interpretation of Branwell's life, though totally subjective, intriguing and a perfect read just as I'm about to fall to sleep at night. So little is known of him, that this book is a must-read, just because it exists.

BRANWELL is an historical novel which tells the story of the Bronte family from the perspective of the black sheep brother, about whom most readers only know he was painted out of the family portrait. Like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (about the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre), Branwell enhances any reading of the sister's novels.

I didn't find this book poetic, mood-evoking, or compelling at all. The writing is artsy-fartsy affectation. Not to mention shallow and trite.

I've been reading books by and about the Brontes for most of my life. This includes literary criticism, biographies, and fictional novels based on their lives. With fiction a writer can speculate, take some liberties, expand on ideas concerning a famous literary genius' personality. That's to be expected and the result is often alluring. However, in this novel, there seems to be no setting of historical place. We have no idea if and when we are in the 18-teens, when Branwell was born, or the 1840's, when Branwell died. There is no background, no atmosphere, whether of the Yorkshire moors or England itself. Branwell Bronte's father and famous literary sisters are just names to be mentioned, shadowy puppets in the background, stick figures enacting the simplest reactions. There's no description - just a queasy glut of mood, if that's what it's to be called. The inferrence of Branwell's activities is the worst of all. The author coyly skirts around Branwell's "depravity", never settling in on naming it, only hinting at what might have occurred, and slithering the supposed events over with an oily, liquor-and-laudenaum-soaked fog of guessing.

Reknown Bronte historian and researcher Juliet Barker has proven without doubt, in discovering transcribed eyewitness accounts of the time, that Branwell Bronte did indeed have a sexual affair with his employer, Lydia Robinson, which was the direct cause for his dismissal as the Robinson son's tutor. He also known to have impregnanted one, perhaps two young women in neighborhoods where he was elsewhere employed. Whether or not he was also engaged in clandestine homosexual activities is something which has not been sufficiently proven even though it's been popular to hint at it for the past three decades (Barker refutes it, as well as do other contemporary Bronte biographers), but this was Branwell's own personal business anyway. What he definitely was not was a pedophile preying upon the child of the family for whom he worked. Artistic license has gone too far and made a sympathetic if pitiful historical figure repugnant, and to not zero in on the reactions of the protagonists, the effects upon all concerned, however fictional this device, is a cop-out. Instead the smarmy curtain of "mood" remains.

I think this book was a sorry failure at what it was attempting. Immediately upon finishing - for I forced myself to get through the entire thing - I tossed it into the giveaway pile - only because I can't bear to throw any book, no matter how bad, into the garbage can.

The historical narrative of the one and only Bronte son, BRANWELL is a grand gesture, Martin's style is so dreamily crafted. The author not only reconstructs the permanent veiling of Branwell's spirit by way of his sisters' fame, but through prose as mesmeric as that found in his previous works, it seems as though Martin personally knows his protagonist, Patrick "Branwell" Bronte, alighting the years between with dexterity unlike any other. Martin is a time traveler and his books well-oiled machines, facilitating insight, enlightening, and grooming audiences for what is yet to come. This novel continues to educate far beyond its first reading.

This isn't a straightforward biography of Branwell Bronte, it is much better than that.

Douglas Martin is a poet and this book is a beautiful poetic dream, using the dark, damp, brooding atmosphere of the moors and parsonage to set the scene. Branwell's relationship with his sisters, his involvement with their writings, his drug and alcohol abuse and eventual downfall are all brilliantly portrayed.

Douglas Martin has a deceptively simple style of writing, very easy to read. I don't know of any other author who can convey so much meaning and emotion in so few words. He never tries to give a complete picture, the narrative is fragmentary, and he doesn't draw conclusions. Subtly outlining such issues such as Branwell's sexuality and his sudden dismissal from his post as tutor at Thorp Green, he leaves it to the readers to decide for themselves what actually happened. His extensive knowledge of the Bronte family and their writings comes across clearly.

It's tempting to read the book quickly, but don't do that - you will miss a lot of the subtleties in the text. The more you reread this book, the better it gets - brilliant!

As far as I can ascertain, there are only two books devoted to Branwell. And this is one of them. The other one ("Profligate Son") is a bit better. Why has the brother of the Bronte sisters been so ignored? At least Dahpne took the time to notice him. But her book adds little truly useful and new information. So this book is better than nothing. I mean, so many think that Branwell influenced his sisters' writings. It's widely believed that the crazy wife locked inside a room in "Jane Eyre" was modeled after Branwell's fits and screams while drunk in his bedroom upstairs and also while later enduring the D.T.s upstairs in his father's room. He is also suppose to be represented through "Wuthering Heights." So why has so little been written about him? It's frustrating.