Charlotte Brontë An Irish Odyssey

by Michael O’Dowd

Charlotte Brontë, An Irish Odyssey

Charlotte Brontë and the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls married on Thursday 29 June 1854 in her home town of Haworth, Yorkshire. The newlyweds’ honeymoon, the itinerary of which was shared by Charlotte in a letter to a friend, was spent in Ireland after a stop-over in Wales.

This book is a celebration of their wedding trip and Irish Odyssey.

The Nicholls’ grand tour entailed a long journey from Haworth to the town of Banagher, home to Arthur’s relatives. The tiresome trek, along with Charlotte’s “bad cold” restrained sight-seeing in Wales and Dublin, and hindered Charlotte’s initial enjoyment of the holiday to some extent. The honeymoon only truly began when kindly ministrations in Banagher enabled her to feel “greatly better” and in fine fettle for pleasurable leisure trips.

Although Charlotte was a regular letter writer, she recorded little of the people she met, or of the scenery and sojourns along the Irish way. However, it was possible to create a honeymoon travel record based on the writings of friends and literary acquaintances who toured many of the same trails and sites before the Nicholls, such as the authors Harriet Martineau, Sir John Forbes, William Thackeray, her much-loved Sir Walter Scott, Percy Shelley, and others, including their clerical friends the Reverend Sowdens.

296 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2021

Reviews

[Deacon Tom (Feeling Better) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael O’Dowd has written an absolutely marvelous memoir of Charlotte Bronte & Arthur Bell Nichols’ month-long honeymoon to Ireland .

I personally was engaged in this book because it duplicates a trip that we made from England to Ireland. So, as you can imagine, the descriptions of Ireland in the 1850s and my experiences in the 2017 were much different. However, they were also alike in many ways. Especially for Flora, fauna and landscape descriptions.

Not only are the book’s descriptions well crafted but they are very well researched and cited. O’Dowd uses Charlotte’s correspondence to wonderfully embrace the feelings of these newlyweds.

I loved this book and I give it my highest recommendation.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Debra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one when I started it, but it reads like a uninteresting travel journal/teen paper divided into chapters. There was very little about Charlotte and her husband until the very end. The reader gets little glimpses here and there about the couple themselves but it mostly focuses on the places they traveled but not in a remotely interesting way to the reader. I honestly considered not finishing several times.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Mairead · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wandering