Experimental feature: Order The Poems of Anne Bronte from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.

               

Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.

Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780333243435
ISBN: 0333243439
Label: Palgrave Macmillan
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
Book Pages: 232
Publication Date: 1979-04-26
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Studio: Palgrave Macmillan

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A surprising discovery
Review: I found this book at my University's library. An admirer of Anne's novels, this new study of her life and works was a pleasant surprise. Beware: The text of the biography and the footnotes are set in small print. I found the substance to be well-researched, erudite and charming. Chitham takes the "Bronte myth" propounded by Charlotte, E. Gaskell, et al, as it applies to the youngest sister, and compares it with factual records, reminisences, and her poems.

As Chitham argues, the poetry cannot be read as auto-biography; Anne wears a "mask" in her art. Chitham breaks new ground: Where "Thorp Green" is; Anne praised her father's first curate for his cheerfulness, yet, subtly hints that she knew he had many admirers!! The long, introspective "religious" poems are here, too. It is a pity that Charlotte found them *after* Anne's death. They reflect the struggles of a courageous and hopeful soul with despair, lonliness, disillusionment, and finally, the long painful illness of tuberculosis.

Chitham's "Poems..." is a book for the general reader. A sibling of the Byronic-Romantic Brontes was a satirist and Realist. It happens. :) Preferably to be read after Chitham's biography of Anne Bronte.

---

---