Edward Chitham – författare

Emily Bronte's achievement as a poet has been in part eclipsed by that of her masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, yet the poems reveal a powerful and highly individual imagination and poetic voice. The Poems of Emily Bronte is the first edition of the poetry to appear with full scholarly apparatus: based wherever possible on the manuscripts, it preserves Bronte's original (sometimes unorthodox) presentation, and records the stages of her revisions. The lack of any surviving manuscript of the novel makes this policy particularly valuable, since it offers the reader the rare chance of watching the writer's creative mind at work.Returning to the original manuscripts has achieved a more accurate text than in any previous edition, resulting in a substantial number of new readings. The Poems records everything that could be deciphered from these difficult manuscripts, including Emily Bronte's spelling, punctuation, and numerous variants, cancellations, and revisions.The enlightening introduction and commentary place the poems in their literary context, and a large number of echoes and parallels from Scott, Byron, Moore, and other authors are identified. The 'Gondal' Poems are related to what is known of that imaginary world in which many poems are set, and a fresh attempt is made to relate these to Emily Bronte's other poems.

This new book on the Brontes concentrates on the way in which the literary interests and expressions of Charlotte and Emily were built up. It makes use of recent research into background and reading matter to investigate the development of the authors' poetry and novels.

This new book on the Brontes concentrates on the way in which the literary interests and expressions of Charlotte and Emily were built up. It makes use of recent research into background and reading matter to investigate the development of the authors' poetry and novels.

This new book on the Brontes concentrates on the way in which the literary interests and expressions of Charlotte and Emily were built up. It makes use of recent research into background and reading matter to investigate the development of the authors'' poetry and novels.

Biographical material on Emily Brontë is scarce. In the past, biographers have taken this as an excuse to portray intuition as fact, creating a confused and inaccurate image of the author of Wuthering Heights. In A Life of Emily Brontë, Edward Chitham searches diligently for the truth. He describes his book as an 'investigative biography', delving into Emily's childhood, her relationships with her family, her father's Irish roots, and the influences of her friends and acquaintances. Using material neglected by other biographers, Chitham makes an illuminating and scholarly study of the events and characters that shaped Emily's inspiration - a puzzle that has confounded many and made her, up to this point, an enigmatic and misrepresented figure.

This is the definitive edition of the poems by the leading modern editor. It makes the work fully accessible to all. / This new edition is essential to understanding Anne Brontë’s life, her entire literary works, and her relationships with her sisters. / Anne Brontë`s poems have in the past been overshadowed by the marvellous productions of her elder sister Emily, whose leadership she accepted for many years during her youth. In commenting on both the novels and the poetry, however, the increasingly different aims of the two are only just now being clearly recognised. Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are not both simply `Gothic novels` and the poetic work of Anne and Emily cannot be subsumed under the heading ''Gondal''.  / As this editor shows, we have to grasp how different Anne Brontë`s life experiences were from those of her sisters. Charlotte and Emily shared a bedroom in their childhood (indeed, a bed). They made up their plays which Charlotte called `strange`. Anne slept with her Aunt Elizabeth, a lively, intelligent woman coming from the Wesleyan hotspot of Cornwall. She was steeped in Wesleyan Methodism and had nothing to do with Calvinism. Elizabeth inducted Anne into Evangelical Christianity, a view congenial to Patrick, Anne`s father. Without understanding Anne`s continuous and heartfelt attachment to this mode of thought, feeling and action, we cannot understand her work. As a Methodist, Elizabeth insisted on organised work and behaviour, and as a Wesleyan, on the view that `Jesus died for all`; Anne took on these attitudes. / We have Anne`s retrospective view of her life in poem No.57, which Edward Chitham argues should be studied very closely. It is an intensely honest summary of her life`s experience. Clare Flaherty called this poem a `haunting, elegiac lament over an unfulfilled life`. Here Anne relives her childhood, stressing her own vulnerability, but also her concern for others. She points to the Bible as her exemplar and surprisingly says that her study makes her `wiser than her teachers`, pointing among other things to the scenes in Wildfell Hall where Helen uses theology to struggle with her husband on his deathbed. In lines 178-207 she deals with her relations with Emily. / Edward Chitham, in his new introduction, suggests that nothing could be clearer than her admission that the two drifted away from each other, from childhood to adulthood. In Gondal, sometimes Anne supported Emily`s narrative, sometimes wrote on her own account. Though Emily has often appeared the more dominant woman, sometimes – for example, after the initial rejection of Wuthering Heights - Anne firmly but quietly supported her sister.