The Brontë books in the Hargreaves Collection
In this blog, Noor Zohdy, Laidlaw Scholar 2024, reports on their summer research project looking at editions of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
As part of my Laidlaw research project this summer on Anne Brontë and her novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I was exploring the Hargreaves Brontë books. It was an absolutely fascinating experience. Being able to turn the pages of the three-volume second edition of Tenant, published in Anne’s lifetime, and with her incredible feminist preface, was surreal.
I loved exploring the material culture of the Brontë texts as well: some highlights were the nineteenth-century hardback cover illustrations; there were beautiful, simple images such as a bunch of wildflowers and a bluebird with leaves . Quite fitting, I think – like the heroine of Anne’s first novel Agnes Grey, Anne loved walks in nature and wild bluebells were her favourite flowers.
Following the death of Charlotte Brontë in 1855 and the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë two years later, the Brontë family fame took off. Lucasta Miller’s, The Brontë Myth studies how this text and led to their increased fame and mythologisation in the cultural conscience. In these years, the famous ‘Haworth Edition’ of their works was published, advertised as a special edition, complete with illustrations and in beautiful, red, hardback copies. Flipping through the pages of the books from the ‘Haworth Edition’ I noticed how many illustrations drew upon the Halls of the Brontë novels: from Wildfell, to Thornfield, to Thrushcross Grange.
Even today, Haworth draws tourists to the sites, such as the Top Withens farm ruins, said to have been the inspiration of Wuthering Heights, and other manor houses nearby, such as Norton Conyers, the said inspiration for Thornfield. It’s fascinating to consider how all of these pieces came together in the creation of the windswept Brontësque moorland mythology people know of today. Thinking back, too, it was wonderfully exciting to read the contemporary reviews at the back of the books I was viewing. I was particularly drawn to one of Wuthering Heights that speaks to precisely this mythologising tradition of Brontë history: ‘they are so new, so wildly grotesque, so entirely without art, that they strike us as proceeding from a mind of limited experience, but of original energy, and of a singular and distinctive cast’.
The Parlour Library Edition of Anne’s novel, as ‘Acton Bell, Miss Anne Brontë’ was an illuminating little book and possibly among my favourites. The wonderfully Gothic and dramatic Wildfell Hall depicted on its cover and the classic, dripping Gothic font speaks to the conventions of popular, idiosyncratic, sensation fiction of the second half of the nineteenth-century. The especially narrow book is also a fascinating artefact in the history of the censorship and marginalisation of Anne’s radical, realist novel in the years after her death due to the actions of her protective older sister, Charlotte. Luckily, Anne’s novel came to be appreciated in the years to come. Today, Anne’s novel is appreciated for all of its complex brilliance – the Parlour Library hardback is a far cry from the neat Penguin Classics editions we find on our library shelves. It’s amazing to think how many lives this triumphant book has had.
Another absolute highlight was an edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from the Library of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., an American author and historian. His bookplate also bears the name of his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, the 6th US President. John Quincy Adams was quite the book collector, collecting over 6 000 books over his life; in 1870, his son established Stone Library to house his father’s collection. Another edition of Tenant I came across contained the bookplate of Alfred, Viscount Milner, K. G., a key figure of twentieth-century British politics. It’s amazing how far Anne and her sisters’ novels travelled and how many people their writing reached, far beyond their little town in Haworth!
Noor Zohdy
The detail in this article, regarding authors and works, is highly appealing, as is the narrative quality. Anne, reasonably enough, I guess, is the Brontë I know least about--and I'm grateful now to know more!