Harsh Bronte land

Press, 17 December 1988, Page 24

Harsh Bronte land

The Landscape of the Brontes. By Arthur Pollard. Photographs by Simon Mcßride. Michael Joseph, 1988. 192 pp. $49.95 (Reviewed by Stephen Erber)

I am not sure at whom (if anybody) this book is aimed. I say this because the blurb remarks it was “specially commissioned.” If there is such a thing as an amateur Bronte enthusiast I suspect this person to be the target. By this I mean the sort of person who is not sure whether “Shirley” was the book or the Bronte.

Apparently the idea for this book arose from the fact that much of the writings of all three Bronte sisters depend in large measure for their atmosphere on the countryside in which the characters live. That countryside was the moorland of Yorkshire. Well over 100 years have passed since the last of the Bronte sisters died, but remarkably, the shape

and atmosphere of that countryside appears to have changed little. So much is clear from Simon Mcßride’s photographs.

Notwithstanding a liberal application of the photographer’s art to the subject, he has however, been unable to disguise the essentiall forbiding desolation of much of the moorland and the rather gloomy and wintery (most of the photographs appear to have been taken in winter) aspect of the villages and buildings. The book is really a very general biographical sketch of the Bronte family as a whole with, as may be expected, frequent quoted reference to the countryside in the writings of Charlotte, Anne and Emily, and with the photographic depiction of that coutryside. For the Bronte beginner a better book could scarcely be had, combining a biography with appositely selected quotations and photographs.