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This special edition of The Oxford Companion to the Brontës commemorates the bicentenary of Emily Brontë's birth in July 1818 and provides comprehensive and detailed information about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontës - the three sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, their father, and their brother Branwell.
Expanded entries surveying the Brontës' lives and works are supplemented by entries on friends and acquaintances, pets, literary and political heroes; on the places they knew and the places they imagined; on their letters, drawings and paintings; on historical events such as Chartism, the Peterloo Massacre, and the Ashantee Wars; on exploration, slavery, and religion. Selected entries on the characters and places in the Brontë juvenilia provide a glimpse into their early imaginative worlds, and entries on film, ballet, and musicals indicate the extent to which their works have inspired others. A new foreword to the text has been also penned by Claire Harman, award-winning writer and literary critic, and recent biographer of Charlotte Brontë.
This is a unique and authoritative reference book for the research student and the general reader. The A-Z format, extensive cross-referencing, classified contents, chronologies, illustrations, and maps, both facilitate quick reference and encourage further exploration. This Companion is not only invaluable for quick searches, but a delight to browse, and an inspiration to further reading.
List of contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Editors and Contributors
- Classified Contents List
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Maps
- Note to the Reader
- THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE BRONTËS: A-Z
- Dialect and Obsolete Words
- Bibliography
About the author
Christine Alexander is Emeritus Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and general editor of the Juvenilia Press. Her books include the multi-volume
Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte BrontÃ', the co-authored
The Art of the BrontÃ's, The BrontÃ'sâ
Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Early Writings, Jane Austen's
Love and Friendship and Other Youthful Writings, and the British Academy prize-winning book
The Early Writings of Charlotte BrontÃ'. She has also published widely on gothic literature, critical editing, literary juvenilia, and landscape gardening, and has co-edited
The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf.
Margaret Smith was formerly Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Science, University of Birmingham, and a Vice-President of the Brontë Society. She has edited many of the Brontës' works, including
The Professor,
Jane Eyre,
Shirley,
Villette, and
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and
The Letters of Charlotte Brontë.
Summary
This Companion brings together a wealth of information about the perennially fascinating lives and writings of the Brontë sisters. In addition, wide-ranging articles enable the reader to see them in their literary and social context, and to trace their enduring influence on the work of other writers.
Additional text
It's as authoritative as you'd expect, with more than 2,000 entries ... Even if you are not an academic seeking facts, you could browse absorbingly for hours.
Report
The anniversary edition of The Oxford Companion to the Brontës is a carefully compiled, extended reissue of the comprehensive volume of scholarship first published in 2003. Its timely publication contributes to the exciting increase in scholarship on the Brontë siblings to commemorate the bicentenaries of their births. Tamara S. Wagner, 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries of the Early Modern Era
