Bronte Sisters Tourist Information

Bronte Sisters History

The Brontes came to Haworth in 1820, and the following year their mother died. As children in a parsonage family they kept very much to themselves, serving their apprenticeships in producing imaginative epics and poetry in miniature booklets. In 1825 the eldest sister of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, Maria Bronte, died. Death was common-place in the lives of the young Brontes who often saw the coffins for burial in the churchyard of Haworth Parsonage

What Charlotte and Emily Bronte felt about the political and religious non-conformity in Haworth and the West Riding surround creeps into the Bronte novels (one of the most obvious examples Gaskell gives is the character of Joseph in Wuthering Heights) and even into their somewhat early isolated lives - Patrick Bronte kept a loaded pistol under his bed every night after the Luddite risings.

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The Bronte Parsonage Museum Haworth

Haworth Parsonage was built in 1799, and enlarged in the 1860s. The Bronte Society took it over in 1927, and turned it into the Bronte Parsonage Museum, with rooms and furnishings as they would have been in the mid-1850s.

Less crowded in week days, and out of the summer season, the Bronte Parsonage Museum is a fascinating insight into one of the country's most celebrated literary families. Highlights include viewing the prized miniature books written by the Bronte children encapsulating their imagined world of Gondal. Most of these surviving examples were written by Charlotte Bronte.

Also on show within the Bronte Parsonage is Elizabeth Gaskell's sketch of the Parsonage and the church of 1832, which depicts it as bleaker without the enclosed churchyard and trees which became a feature later. Behind the parsonage sits an extensive Bronte book and gift shop. For a comprehensive chronology and history of all the Bronte family see the Bronte Parsonage Museum's webguide link right for details.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD22 8DR. Tel. 01535 642323.

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