I then went on a research trip to Yorkshire to augment my desk research, including spending time in the Bronte Parsonage Museum archives. So I did a full year of research before starting to write the novel that would become Bronte’s Mistress.įollowing on from this, I drafted the novel in under six months, including revising as I worked. The Brontes are incredibly famous and we know a lot about their lives. How long did it take for you to write the book? Did you do have to do any research? And I worked on the project obsessively, convinced that if I didn’t tell Lydia’s story, somebody else would. I knew this was a book I just had to write. Somebody, I thought, must have told Lydia’s side of the story, through a twenty-first century feminist lens. I was fascinated by this salacious piece of gossip from literary history and shocked at the gender double standard in Gaskell’s judgment of Lydia. Gaskell described Lydia as “wretched” and “profligate,” and accused her of tempting Branwell into the “deep disgrace of a deadly crime.” In this case, she told readers, “the man became the victim.” I was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte (the first Bronte biography) when I came across her description of Lydia Robinson, the older woman rumored to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte. What sparked the idea for Bronte’s Mistress ? Robinson-the older woman rumored to have had an affair with Branwell Bronte, leading to the downfall of the entire Bronte family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |