Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother [Paperback]

Douglas A. Martin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2006

A gifted artist and writer, Branwell Bronte, an only son, is expected to make the family fortune and distinguish the Bronte name. Instead, he dies at 31 from alcohol and opium abuse. Painstakingly tutored at home by his father, Branwell and his sisters write endless stories about imaginary worlds far from their bleak parsonage home. As his sisters spin the stories that will immortalize them, Branwell sinks under the weight of great expectations. With language as rich and dark as the moors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Douglas A. Martin probes the locus where history and myth collide, and uncovers Branwell’s lost loves, thwarted talent, and possible homosexuality. Maintaining the haunting quality of childhood memory throughout, Bronte Boy is a genre-bending exploration of the tragic figure of Branwell Bronte and the dismal, dazzling landscape that inspired his sisters to greatness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this mannered, tortuous life of Charlotte Brontë's younger brother, Branwell, novelist Martin (Outline of My Lover) offers a tender, tragic portrayal of a doomed artist and homosexual avant la lettre. In Martin's marvelous free and direct telling, Branwell, as the sole son among many daughters (only Charlotte, Emily and Anne survived childhood) is accorded privileges they are not, such as special home schooling by their strict father, curate of provincial Haworth. Branwell also lords over the set of toy soldiers the siblings use in elaborate play wars, creating vast civilizations in poems and plays. The early deaths of their mother and sisters Maria and Elizabeth prove shattering for Branwell, on whose fragile shoulders the great hopes of the house rest. Sent off alone to London to gain admittance to the Royal Academy, he falls continually in his family's esteem, becoming a local drunkard and apprentice to the secretly homosexual freemason society; a last chance at gainful employment, as tutor to a boy in Thorp Green, ends in a scandalous dismissal, and Branwell descends irretrievably into a drug-induced, punishing state of monomania. Though slender, this volume's beautiful declarative sentences are perfectly fitted to this famously imaginative, headstrong family; they bring Branwell Brontë's world to light. (Oct.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (February 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368004
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368009
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,470,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poetic novel / biography of the Bronte brother, October 9, 2007

By 

Carolyn Matthews (England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother (Paperback)

This isn't a straightforward biography of Branwell Bronte, it is much better than that.

Douglas Martin is a poet and this book is a beautiful poetic dream, using the dark, damp, brooding atmosphere of the moors and parsonage to set the scene. Branwell's relationship with his sisters, his involvement with their writings, his drug and alcohol abuse and eventual downfall are all brilliantly portrayed.

Douglas Martin has a deceptively simple style of writing, very easy to read. I don't know of any other author who can convey so much meaning and emotion in so few words. He never tries to give a complete picture, the narrative is fragmentary, and he doesn't draw conclusions. Subtly outlining such issues such as Branwell's sexuality and his sudden dismissal from his post as tutor at Thorp Green, he leaves it to the readers to decide for themselves what actually happened. His extensive knowledge of the Bronte family and their writings comes across clearly.

It's tempting to read the book quickly, but don't do that - you will miss a lot of the subtleties in the text. The more you reread this book, the better it gets - brilliant!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Douglas A. Martin has done it again!, October 14, 2007

By 

Erika Theiss (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother (Paperback)

The historical narrative of the one and only Bronte son, BRANWELL is a grand gesture, Martin's style is so dreamily crafted. The author not only reconstructs the permanent veiling of Branwell's spirit by way of his sisters' fame, but through prose as mesmeric as that found in his previous works, it seems as though Martin personally knows his protagonist, Patrick "Branwell" Bronte, alighting the years between with dexterity unlike any other. Martin is a time traveler and his books well-oiled machines, facilitating insight, enlightening, and grooming audiences for what is yet to come. This novel continues to educate far beyond its first reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Branwell, an unforgettable failure, April 4, 2008

By 

P. B. Sharp (NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother (Paperback)

Consider three extraordinary girls and their brother who is only extraordinary because he breathed the same air and trod the same ground as his sisters, and is famous only by osmosis. Branwell Bronte was a failure, an excruciating failure, because he had the intellect but not the talent or the fiber to succeed as an artist or a writer. And he had to watch as his sisters spun their marvelous tales and became household names while he plunged deeper and deeper into a world of opium.

And indeed, this superb novel is written as the stuff of dreams, of a delirium, of a misty world in which Branwell and Charlotte and Emily and Anne appear almost as wraiths, as ghosts on the moors, gone from this world in the blink of an eye. Nothing seems to be quite real, but this is Branwell's story, and poet Martin gives him understanding, substance and depth. Yet he is illusive, too, his red hair a badge of bravado but the rest of him fading away a bit more after each failure until he sunk into his death- bed, a hollow husk of the young man who had once shown such promise.

"Branwell" is a lyrical book, written by the hand and heart of a poet. In a way, in this book, Branwell comes into his own because we can identify with him so well. Highly recommended.