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 © Wendy Bardsley 2014

A vivid and evocative portrait of the lost Brontë brother, a lyrical account of the family, landscape and era that made this tormented man what he was, conspire to make a magical novel. Branwell talks, suffers, loves - the sisters fret, the moor lives and breathes - we believe every word of it - and rightly so. Poet Bardsley has done her research, come up with fresh and convincing insights into Branwell's short, tragic life, and transmuted it into an admirable piece of literature.

Fay Weldon

"It takes a stigma to beat a dogma", goes the old saw. Quite where myths fit into this hierarchy of intransigence is unclear, but there are many myths about the Brontës as any eavesdropper at the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth can testify. Some progress has been made in recent years on weakening the 'Saintly Charlotte' stereotype, so carefully created by Mrs Gaskell (and Charlotte herself). Even the mad parson Patrick Brontë, who burnt his wife's dresses and fired his pistol at the Church tower, is being transmuted into a socially progressive thinker and caring father.

But Branwell carries the stigma of the feckless and wayward son who squandered his talent in self-pity, drink and drugs, and brought the family to its knees. "The least said about him, poor lad, the better," wrote Mrs Gaskell. On the blurb on a CD of the poems of his sisters purchased recently, the same old canard is paraded, that the worthless Branwell took to drink and drugs. Yet this is the lad who inspired his sisters to write stories in the first place; who had eighteen of his poems published before his sisters did; whose translation of the Odes of Horace impressed the great Hartley Coleridge; and whose recently published prose works fill three volumes!

Now "Poor, brilliant, gay, moody, moping, wildly excitable, miserable Brontë" (Francis Grundy in 1879) has a champion at last. In Wendy Bardsley's new novel, the stereotype becomes a person. Here we have a thinking, feeling, dreaming and passionate lad, let loose on the world, who finds a woman to love. Rarely have I found a writer so immured in the characters of the Brontë family and their friends. And not just Branwell. Emily, Charlotte, Anne, Patrick, all have their distinctive and credible personalities. Authentic personalities - Bardsley knows her Brontës well, and their lives, their home, their times. John Brown, the sexton grumbling at all the grave stones he has to prepare; the rustic Michael and his knowledge of making paint pigments from plants; the many other characters that stick in the memory. Hartley Coleridge is a treasure.

Wendy's characterisation is superb. Her storytelling too. Unputdownable.

Bob Duckett

UK Editor, Brontë Studies; Editor Brother in the Shadow: Stories & Sketches by Branwell Brontë (1988);

Hon. Publications Secretary, Brontë Society.

Branwell Brontë’s Creation

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