Nick Holland – författare

Anne Brontë, the youngest and most enigmatic of the Brontë sisters, remains a bestselling author nearly two centuries after her death. The brilliance of her two novels – Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – and her poetry belies the quiet, yet courageous girl who often lived in the shadows of her more celebrated sisters. Yet her writing was the most revolutionary of all the Brontës, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable.This revealing new biography opens Anne’s most private life to a new audience and shows the true nature of her relationship with her sister Charlotte.

Elizabeth Branwell was born in Penzance in 1770, a member of a large and influential Cornish family of merchants and property owners. In 1821 her life changed forever when her sister Maria fell dangerously ill. Leaving her comfortable life behind, Elizabeth made the long journey north to a remote moorland village in Yorkshire to nurse her sister. After the death of Maria, Elizabeth assumed the role of second mother to her nephew and five nieces. She would never see Cornwall again, but instead dedicated her life to her new family: the Bront s of Haworth, to whom she was known as Aunt Branwell.In this first ever biography of Elizabeth Branwell, we see at last the huge impact she had on Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bront , as well as on her nephew Branwell Bront who spiralled out of control away from her calming influence. It was a legacy in Aunt Branwell's will that led directly to the Bront books we love today, but her influence on their lives and characters was equally important. As opposed to the stern aunt portrayed by Mrs. Gaskell in her biography of Charlotte Bront , we find a kind hearted woman who sacrificed everything for the children she came to love. This revealing book also looks at the Branwell family, and how their misfortunes mirrored that of the Bront s, and we find out what happened to the Bront cousin who emigrated to America, and in doing so uncover the closest living relatives to the Bront sisters today.

Emily Jane Brontë was born in July 1818; along with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, she is famed as a member of the greatest literary family of all time, and helped turn Haworth into a place of literary pilgrimage. Whilst Emily Brontë wrote only one novel, the mysterious and universally acclaimed Wuthering Heights, she is widely acknowledged as the best poet of the Brontë sisters – indeed as one of the greatest female poets of all time. Her poems offer insights to her relationships with her family, religion, nature, the world of work, and the shadowy and visionary powers that increasingly dominated her life.Taking twenty of her most revealing poems, Nick Holland creates a unifying impression of Emily Brontë, revealing how this terribly shy young woman could create such wild and powerful writing, and why she turned her back on the outside world for one that existed only in her own mind.