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The Letters of the Brontes
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Hardcover
Published January 1, 1954
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About the author
Muriel Spark
226 books1,296 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 6, 2019
Letter 97 is one of the saddest things I have ever read.
On July 14, 1849, Charlotte Bronte writes to her closest friend and most frequent correspondent Ellen Nussy. She reports first that her cold has moved from her head, to her throat, and then to her chest. She has still a “trifling cough” and a pain between her shoulders. Some of these symptoms might be due to her “nervous nature.” She concludes, “I dare communicate no ailment to papa; his anxiety harasses me inexpressively.’ (More on the Bronte men later.)
Then comes the body of the letter:
Charlotte concludes with formulaic self-deprecation and well wishes. She hopes that Ellen will not believe her, “…any worse off than I am.” And she sends, “My love to your mother and sisters…”
By 1849, Charlotte had published Jane Eyre to great success and seen to the publication of her sisters’ novels, Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey. But she was also the only surviving Brontë sibling. Emily had died of tuberculosis in 1848, the same year that their brother Branwell drank himself to death. Anne contracted tuberculosis while caring for her sister and died, at the age of 29, two months before Charlotte wrote the letter quoted here.
Muriel Spark’s selection of letters from all members of the Brontë family does not paint an absolutely dismal picture of the family’s life, but theirs was a constricted life. The few letters between Charlotte, her London publishers, and the literary acquaintances she makes hint at the society we might think she deserved as an author. But had that been her milieu, she would never have written the books she did.
And about the Brontë men.
Branwell is the classic, beloved black sheep of the family. He was to be an artist, but abandoned art school. He briefly worked as a tutor, but a dalliance with the boy’s mother ended that foray into gainful employment. He moved back home and continued the heavy drinking he had begun when while living on his own. Periodically he wrote supercilious letters to the Edinburgh Review, pompously offering himself as a contributor and wondering why his previous queries had gone unanswered. His last letter was to the sexton of the local church, asking the man to buy him “…five pence worth of Gin in a proper measure.” He arranges a meeting at the crossroad the next morning. “I anxiously ask the favor because I know what good it will do me.” He died a few months later.
As for the Rev. Patrick Brontë: Less than two years after his wife’s death, the Reverend wrote a letter to Mary Bruder, a woman he had broken an engagement to fifteen years before. Learning that she has remained single, he suggests that he make a long visit to her family to see if the sparks might again fly. (Not his wording.) Mary Bruder responds to what seems to have been his third letter. She confesses that hearing from him causes “sensations of surprise and agitation,” and goes on for several paragraphs that, although they make her feelings clear, read like a generous response to a situation that today would be handled by a the text message, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Patrick Brontë outlived all his children and died at the age of eighty-four.
On July 14, 1849, Charlotte Bronte writes to her closest friend and most frequent correspondent Ellen Nussy. She reports first that her cold has moved from her head, to her throat, and then to her chest. She has still a “trifling cough” and a pain between her shoulders. Some of these symptoms might be due to her “nervous nature.” She concludes, “I dare communicate no ailment to papa; his anxiety harasses me inexpressively.’ (More on the Bronte men later.)
Then comes the body of the letter:
My life is what I expected it to be. Sometimes when I wake in the morning, and know that Solitude, Remembrance, and Longing are to be almost my sole companions all day through, that at night I shall go to bed with them, that they will keep me sleepless, that next morning I shall wake to them again; sometimes, Ellen, I have a heavy heart of it. But crushed I am not yet; nor robbed of elasticity, nor of hope, not quite of endeavor. Still I have some strength to fight the battle of life. I am aware, and can acknowledge, I have many comforts, many mercies. Still I can get on. But I do hope and pray, that never may you, or anyone I love, be placed as I am. To sit in a lonely room, the clock ticking loud through a still house, and to have open before the mind’s eye the record of the last year, with its shocks, sufferings, losses, is a trial.
Charlotte concludes with formulaic self-deprecation and well wishes. She hopes that Ellen will not believe her, “…any worse off than I am.” And she sends, “My love to your mother and sisters…”
By 1849, Charlotte had published Jane Eyre to great success and seen to the publication of her sisters’ novels, Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey. But she was also the only surviving Brontë sibling. Emily had died of tuberculosis in 1848, the same year that their brother Branwell drank himself to death. Anne contracted tuberculosis while caring for her sister and died, at the age of 29, two months before Charlotte wrote the letter quoted here.
Muriel Spark’s selection of letters from all members of the Brontë family does not paint an absolutely dismal picture of the family’s life, but theirs was a constricted life. The few letters between Charlotte, her London publishers, and the literary acquaintances she makes hint at the society we might think she deserved as an author. But had that been her milieu, she would never have written the books she did.
And about the Brontë men.
Branwell is the classic, beloved black sheep of the family. He was to be an artist, but abandoned art school. He briefly worked as a tutor, but a dalliance with the boy’s mother ended that foray into gainful employment. He moved back home and continued the heavy drinking he had begun when while living on his own. Periodically he wrote supercilious letters to the Edinburgh Review, pompously offering himself as a contributor and wondering why his previous queries had gone unanswered. His last letter was to the sexton of the local church, asking the man to buy him “…five pence worth of Gin in a proper measure.” He arranges a meeting at the crossroad the next morning. “I anxiously ask the favor because I know what good it will do me.” He died a few months later.
As for the Rev. Patrick Brontë: Less than two years after his wife’s death, the Reverend wrote a letter to Mary Bruder, a woman he had broken an engagement to fifteen years before. Learning that she has remained single, he suggests that he make a long visit to her family to see if the sparks might again fly. (Not his wording.) Mary Bruder responds to what seems to have been his third letter. She confesses that hearing from him causes “sensations of surprise and agitation,” and goes on for several paragraphs that, although they make her feelings clear, read like a generous response to a situation that today would be handled by a the text message, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Patrick Brontë outlived all his children and died at the age of eighty-four.
July 24, 2021
Muriel Spark writes an introduction, but I wish she had also written notes to these letters. I kept having to resort to Juliet Barker’s group biography of the Brontes to put the letters in context.
Spark is very concerned to save Charlotte from any hints of lesbianism in her relationship with Ellen Nussey: “This is not to suggest that these letters show a sinister peculiarity in Charlotte, but we should understand, I think, that the nervous stress of uncongenial surroundings, combined with the suppression of normal emotions and the complete absence of male company, was bound to cause an upheaval in a highly creative and sensitive mind. In Charlotte’s case, she found relief in a harmless, if abnormal and morbid, correspondence with Ellen Nussey.” p. 20.
Lovely to have included in this book the rejection letter written to Patrick Bronte by Mary Burder, which is the fifth letter in the collection.
The more letters of Charlotte’s I read, the more I disliked her. I felt incredibly sorry for her, but her love letters to her ‘master’ made me cringe; her letter after the death of Bramwell to her publisher in which she talked of it as a mercy made me angry; and her letter to Ellen Nussey conspiring to prevent Anne from travelling to see the sea as she was dying made me furious. Charlotte seems to have rejected Bramwell, idolised Emily, and ignored Anne. But her life was so sad!
I now want to reread the Brontes’ books - except for Wuthering Heights, which I can quite happily live without ever rereading.
Spark is very concerned to save Charlotte from any hints of lesbianism in her relationship with Ellen Nussey: “This is not to suggest that these letters show a sinister peculiarity in Charlotte, but we should understand, I think, that the nervous stress of uncongenial surroundings, combined with the suppression of normal emotions and the complete absence of male company, was bound to cause an upheaval in a highly creative and sensitive mind. In Charlotte’s case, she found relief in a harmless, if abnormal and morbid, correspondence with Ellen Nussey.” p. 20.
Lovely to have included in this book the rejection letter written to Patrick Bronte by Mary Burder, which is the fifth letter in the collection.
The more letters of Charlotte’s I read, the more I disliked her. I felt incredibly sorry for her, but her love letters to her ‘master’ made me cringe; her letter after the death of Bramwell to her publisher in which she talked of it as a mercy made me angry; and her letter to Ellen Nussey conspiring to prevent Anne from travelling to see the sea as she was dying made me furious. Charlotte seems to have rejected Bramwell, idolised Emily, and ignored Anne. But her life was so sad!
I now want to reread the Brontes’ books - except for Wuthering Heights, which I can quite happily live without ever rereading.
October 10, 2022
I like the way these letters are ordered but the introduction seems pretty judgemental and outdated. I can't blame the author for the 1950s perspective though. All in all I loved reading these.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews