Glass Town: Isabel Greenberg

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She is also the illustrator of several children’s books and an associate lecturer at University of the Arts London. Occasionally these worlds would also cross over with characters appearing in Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal narratives. Hector Matthias Mirabeau was born in Wellingtonsland but in the later tales he has been exiled to Paris where he attempts to seduce Percy’s teenage daughter, Caroline Vernon, in the the 1839 novelette of the same name.

Glass Town is a book to savour, a captivating mash-up of fact and fantasy, with something wonderful on every page. More and more, she was finding that she preferred to escape to her imagined worlds over remaining in reality – and she feared that she was going mad.As Charlotte’s tale winds on, the story not only explores the historical implications of what we know about Glass Town, but also speaks through Greenberg’s lens to wider truths. Percy has many mistresses and is thrice married, firstly to the exotic Italian beauty Augusta di Segovia during a wayward youth spent drinking and gambling. However, she appears again as a teenager in The Duke of Zamorna (1838) and Caroline Vernon (1839) where she lives with her mother who has been imprisoned by Zamorna at Eden Cottage near Fidena, a city in the Verdopolitan Union. It was initiated by Charlotte and her brother Branwell; Emily and Anne Brontë later participated in further developing the stories and geography of its world, although they also broke away to conceptualize Gondal, while Charlotte conceptualized Angria. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Greenberg’s take on Glass Town and I sincerely hope that people reading this will be encouraged to seek out the Brontë juvenilia for themselves.

I found this particularly magical – it is a look at the power of the creative process, and how Charlotte in particular as a youth, and Emily in adulthood, became obsessed by the worlds and people they created. Ashantees -The Ashantees were originally wooden ninepins who represented Native Africans and were the enemies of the Young Men in the Brontës’ earliest tales. It’s interesting to learn about Glass Town, but in the end the book feels more like learning about a story than actually experiencing the story for yourself. Duke of Wellington – Based on the historical Duke of Wellington, he is Charlotte Brontë’s chief man in The Young Men’s Play. Christine Alexander, a Brontë juvenilia historian, wrote that "this fictitious world established in Africa bears little resemblance to Africa [.

Mina Laury – Mina is the daughter of Sergeant Edward “Ned” Laury, a soldier turned bodysnatcher who later becomes loyal to the Duke of Wellington. I had been so desperate to read it following that first tantalising glimpse and I was lucky enough to be kindly provided with a review copy by the publisher in the UK, Jonathan Cape. The sagas they created were episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which have been published as juvenilia. Percy has many aliases throughout the juvenilia, including Lord Ellrington (Elrington) and the Earl of Northangerland; he also sometimes adopts the role of a hypocritical Methodist preacher named Ashworth.

In 2011, the Brontë juvenilia was included in a science fiction-focused exhibition at the British Library. After several invasions, Zamorna is exiled, but he later successfully reclaims Angria with the help of characters such as the Duke of Fidena and Warner Howard Warner. Isabel Greenberg’s acclaimed previous works, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth and The One Hundred Nights of Hero, foregrounded young storytellers weaving tales of icy wastes, crumbling towers and battles for love and freedom. It is the perfect combination of clever, crazy, and just a tiny bit creepy, and will appeal to anyone who has wondered about how imagination shapes us, as well as to card-carrying Bronte fans. He is initiated into a secret society named Elysium by Rogue and Hector Montmorency whose real intention is to rob him of his fortune.

In an early manuscript (1826–28) by Charlotte Brontë, "there is a map, which is carefully divided into four provinces (one for each sibling). A devastated Charlotte later chose to resurrect her heroine in what must be another of literature’s earliest examples of retcon. The early writings of Glass Town (1829–34) adopted and reimagined historical and contemporary people, place names and events. If Greenberg could provide the artwork for some future illustrated versions of stories from the juvenilia then that would be spectacular.

Napoleonic Periodicals and the Childhood Imagination: The Influence of War Commentary on Charlotte and Branwell Brontë's Glass Town and Angria". If you are looking for more of a history of the Brontë juvenilia and individual narratives, then head over to my page The Brontë Juvenilia to find out more.

The edition also includes Charlotte Brontë's Roe Head Journal, and Emily and Anne's Diary Papers, important autobiographical sources. In texts such as High Life in Verdopolis (1834) it is hinted that her death was the result of a broken heart aged just seventeen due to her husband’s infidelities. He is an accomplished horseman and a respected field marshal in the Angrian army whose troops come to Zamorna’s aid during the Angrian civil war. After building their first settlement – Twelves Town – they find themselves at war with the native Ashantee tribe.