Hi everyone, it’s Robbie Cheadle here with you today with another post in my Famous Books & Authors series. I am rounding off my series of posts about the Brontë family with a review of a fascinating book about their lives called The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz. It was this book that inspired me to visit the Brontë Museum in Yorkshire in 2019.
My review
I loved this book. I found it to be a really fascinating autobiography of the Brontë family. The detailed information about specific historical objects that featured in the lives of various members of the Brontë family was really interesting and I learned a lot of new facts about life in the Victorian era.
The Brontë children seemed to be surrounded by death and sadness from a young age. They lost their young mother to cancer and their father was left to bring up six children , five girls and one boy, on his own. Only four of the Brontë children lived to adulthood with the two oldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth, dying of consumption at the ages of eleven and ten years old, respectively.
I enjoyed the descriptions of how the remaining four children entertained themselves by writing tiny books filled with stories of their own creation. I would love to go and see the surviving books in the Brontë Museum.
Patrick Brontë, the father, came across as a tyrannical man with some very strange ideas on raising children. Apparently, his children were fed a poor diet that excluded meat and they were not strong and robust as a result. This may have been part of the reason he outlived them all. He doted on his only son and spoiled him with the result that he grew up to be a tempestuous man with an inflated opinion of his own artistic abilities which ultimately led to his downfall. Branwell was given the most of Patrick’s four children and achieved the least.
The book describes the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and how they each came to write their books and the circumstances that inspired their stories. Anne, Emily and Branwell also died of consumption as young adults. Charlotte was the only one to get married and she died during pregnancy of extreme morning sickness which caused her to waste away. She died at the age of 29 years old. Based on her letters, Charlotte was a woman capable of great passion and romance.
A uniquely presented biography of the Brontë family for lovers of the Bronte books and also those interested books about life during the Victorian era.
Picture caption: The History and Adventures of Little Henry – This children’s story book, complete with cardboard cut-out figures, belonged to the Brontë children.
The slideshow is of Branwell Brontë’s room at the Brontë Parsonage. Branwell was tutored at home by his father and earned praise for his poetry and translations from the classics. Unfortunately, he drifted between jobs, supporting himself by portrait painting (at which he wasn’t very good), and succumbed to alcohol and drug addiction, worsened by a failed relationship with a married woman.
About Robbie Cheadle
South African author, photographer, and artist, Robbie Cheadle, has written and illustrated seventeen children’s books, illustrated a further three children’s books, written and illustrated four poetry books and written and illustrated one celebration of cake and fondant art book with recipes. Her work has also appeared in poetry and short story anthologies.
Robbie also has two novels and a collection of short stories published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.
You can find Robbie Cheadle’s artwork, fondant and cake artwork, and all her books on her website here: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/
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