Successful Brontës Symposium

With the occasion of the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth the Centre for Victorian Literature and Culture held a symposium on 18th March entitled Writing the Brontës 200 Years After. Although much has been written about the Haworth sisters and their works since Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) the public is as eager as ever to read about them. But how much is left to be told? And, how are the Brontës being written nowadays? To explore this question of the Brontës’ published afterlife, the Centre gathered three outstanding experts in Brontëan biography and dissemination.

The symposium started off with Dr Siv Jansson who, in her capacity as Literary Advisor for the forthcoming BBC drama about the Brontës, is actively immersed in the process of writing the sisters.  Dr Patsy Stoneman (Hull) continued the discussion about “historiographic metafiction” going through a varied list of published biographies which included “biographical fiction” and more factual or critical works.

After Jansson and Stoneman had offered a vivid insight into the wide variety of biographies written about the Brontës, it was then the turn of Sarah Fermi, author of Emily’s Journal (2006). Fermi’s fictional biography of Emily Brontë was inspired by a question that is shared by many: how did Emily, who led a life of semi-seclusion, write Wuthering Heights?

The talks were followed by a Q&A roundtable hosted by Dr Sara Lyons (Kent). This was the moment when the audience could engage with the three speakers who managed to create an atmosphere where dialogue and ideas flowed in all directions. A very special occasion led by very special women.

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