Tag Archives: The Brontes

Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks

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Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1976 and it’s a biographical novel of the Bronte family, given its subject matter it’s a sad read and Lynne Reid Banks admits that she felt daunted by the task, she split the book into five parts beginning in 1821 and ending in 1848-9.

Obviously some of the Bronte’s own novels are very autobiographical which must make it easier to write about those parts of their lives, then there are so many books about them and letters written by them. If you’re at all interested in their writing and the family then possibly there’s not much new in this book, but it’s still an entertaining look into their lives with some embroidering around the facts.

I’ve always been fairly anti-Patrick Bronte, their father, as he has always come across as an intensely selfish person, and the root of all his beloved son’s problems. I suppose it’s inevitable that the only son in a large family is going to get special attention, Branwell was spoiled by his sisters as well as his father and no doubt by his mother too when she was alive, it absolutely ruined him. Favouritism within a family always does ruin the recipient as they just can’t cope when they realise that within the outside world they’re nothing special, which is why I dislike favouritism so much. It’s why I couldn’t enjoy The Master of Ballantrae as much as I had hoped.

Anyway, as you’ll realise this is an even more than usually scanty ‘review’ of a book, but I did enjoy it, however my enjoyment was enhanced by the fact that I’ve visited Haworth Parsonage so I could imagine all the movements within the house as they went between the rooms, or walked around the table, or died on the sofa. The guides at Haworth Parsonage are very good and there were quite a few bits of information from them which could have been used in this book – but weren’t. There’s no mention of how awful the local death rate at Haworth was, with at that time the highest mortality rate in the entire country. That graveyard just outside their front door is absolutely packed with bodies, thousands of them, and despite the fact that the house is at the top of a very steep hill it still managed to get flooded with water from time to time, water which had been siphoned through bodies basically, it was a nightmarish situation.

I’m hoping we’ll go back to visit again someday as the church wasn’t open when we were there.

Harriet Dark by Barbara Rees

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The weather has been rotten, not that I’m complaining when you consider what other people have to put up with at the moment. But it means that I haven’t been able to get on with any gardening. I decided against painting the woodwork in Duncan’s old room because it’s too cold and wet to keep the window open and the paint would take forever to dry.

So I’ve been reading a lot, in fact I have a backlog of 6 book blogposts. I was truly happy that Harriet Dark was a quick read because I felt that I had been conned. It was published in 1978 and it says on the front cover that it’s Branwell Bronte’s Lost Novel. Honestly, the liberties that some people take with a name when people are dead!

The story was a melange, or if you prefer, a mish mash of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and some bits of it were a straight lift from Rebecca. In fact there wasn’t anything original in the story, the names of characters were even Bronte family names, and I think that if Branwell, who was an alcoholic and drug addict, had had the self-discipline to write a book during his chaotic life, it would have been a lot wilder than Harriet Dark.

I wouldn’t have been so annoyed about it except that I did read the first paragraph of the dustcover blurb and it says: Barbara Rees has ingeniously reconstructed this novel.

I admit that I can be nit-picking where words are concerned. The dictionary definition of ingenious is: Clever at inventing, constructing, organizing, etc. Harriet Dark doesn’t come near ingenious.

Branwell is supposed to have described to his friends and family a novel which he had written but no evidence of it has ever been found. Mind you, it does make you wonder what a book by Branwell Bronte would really have been like.

Sometimes when you’re listening to a new tune it doesn’t go quite the way that you think it should and inevitably you think that you could improve on it. Harriet Dark is sort of the bookish equivalent in that anybody with an interest in the Brontes who read it would think that they could do better. Now there’s a challenge!