Category: Non-Fiction

The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne du Maurier

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The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte I’ve been interested in reading this book since I read Daphne by Justine Picardie in 2011. In Daphne, among other storylines, the fictional du Maurier is researching a biography of Branwell Brontë, hoping to find evidence of his talent and the possibility that he may have contributed to his sisters’ famous novels. This book, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, published in 1960, is the result of that research.

Even without reading Justine Picardie’s novel, I would have known du Maurier was a fan of the Brontës as their influence is obvious in some of Daphne’s own novels, particularly Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. I can understand why she may have been fascinated by Branwell, whom she probably saw as a tragic and misunderstood figure. His story is certainly quite a sad one, though a lot of his problems were self-inflicted. As the only boy in a family of girls his father had high hopes for him (to the Victorians it was probably unthinkable that a brother would be outshone by three of his sisters, but with the Brontës that was exactly what happened) and du Maurier suggests that this put him under a lot of pressure to succeed.

As a child, Branwell, like Charlotte, Emily and Anne, was bright and imaginative. He and Charlotte worked together on a set of stories set in the imaginary world of Angria, while Anne and Emily created the fictional land of Gondal. His future seemed full of promise, but as he grew older everything he did seemed to end unhappily. Unlike his sisters he was not sent to school (possibly because his father thought he was too sensitive) and plans for him to study painting at the Royal Academy never came to anything. He tried repeatedly to have some of his poems accepted by Blackwood’s Magazine and was ignored every time; du Maurier tells us that he even wrote to William Wordsworth but didn’t receive a reply. After being dismissed from his job as a clerk at the railway station and then his next job as a tutor (where he possibly had an affair with his employer’s wife), he descended into alcohol and opium addictions and died in 1848 aged thirty-one.

This doesn’t feel like a particularly academic biography and I’m sure there will be more up to date information about Branwell that has come to light since 1960, so I can’t really comment on its accuracy. Du Maurier was a novelist first and foremost and I get the impression her main concern was to capture the essence of Branwell’s character and explore the reasons why he failed where his sisters succeeded and why all his hopes and dreams came to nothing. She also spends a lot of time discussing and analysing Branwell’s work. I was surprised that so many examples of his writing have survived – a lot of his poems are included in this book and some of his prose and letters.

Du Maurier clearly has a lot of sympathy for Branwell, which is not surprising as she has obviously set out to try to restore his reputation and help him gain the recognition he never had during his lifetime. I always think it helps when you can tell that a biographer is genuinely interested in the person he or she is writing about! However, even with du Maurier’s enthusiasm for her subject she never tries to claim that Branwell’s writing was something it wasn’t and she comes to the conclusion that although he did have some talent, his poems were nothing special. His biggest contribution to the literary world may have been the influence he had on the writing of his three sisters.

Daphne du Maurier is one of my favourite authors, but this is the first of her non-fiction books I have read. Since I also love all three Brontë sisters (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are two of my favourite Victorian novels with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall not far behind) this seemed a good choice to begin with. I did find it interesting and the style of the writing is not too different from du Maurier’s novels. I’m not sure how much appeal it would have to people who don’t share my interest in both du Maurier and the Brontës, but for those of you who do want to know more about Branwell and the other Brontës, I definitely think it’s worth reading. I would also highly recommend Jude Morgan’s novel The Taste of Sorrow – it’s a fictional account of the Brontë family (including Branwell and the two older sisters who died as children) but it sticks very closely to the known facts.

The Renaissance: The Best One-Hour History by Robert Freeman

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The Renaissance I spotted this book on Netgalley towards the end of last year and as I’ve been trying to read more historical non-fiction recently, I requested it immediately. It has taken until now for me to get round to reading it, which I feel guilty about as it really did only take an hour to read from beginning to end!

This book is part of a series of One Hour History books each dealing with a different historical period or theme. Other titles include The Protestant Reformation, The French Revolution and The Vietnam War, with more to come soon. This particular volume covers the period of history we know as the Renaissance.

Freeman begins by explaining how factors such as the decline of the feudal system following the Black Death, the fall of Constantinople which led to Greek scholars returning to other parts of Europe, and the decline in the influence of the Catholic Church marked the transition from the ‘Dark Ages’ into the Renaissance. Next he looks at Renaissance art (paintings, sculptures and examples of architecture) and developments in other areas including religion, printing, exploration and medicine. Finally, there’s a timeline showing the dates of significant events.

The author suggests googling the names of the paintings and sculptures discussed in the book so that you can look at them as you read. Most of these works of art were already familiar to me (Freeman chooses to focus on famous pieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, which is understandable, as this book is only intended to give a concise overview) and may be familiar to you too, but I would still recommend searching for the images to look at while you read what Freeman has to say about perspective, light and shadow and other techniques.

This very short book is obviously not intended for people who already have an in-depth understanding of the Renaissance (and it would probably not be very satisfying for those readers) but for anyone with little or no knowledge this is an ideal introduction. After reading it you may decide that you now know as much as you want to know about the Renaissance, but it could also be used as a good starting point for a deeper study of the period – although it’s disappointing that there is no list of suggestions for further reading.

This was not what I would describe as a particularly fun or entertaining book to read – with so much history to get through in so few pages there’s no time for anything but the basic facts – but it was an interesting and educational way to spend an hour of my time.

Review copy received via Netgalley.

The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins by William M. Clarke

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The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins After reading The Frozen Deep recently, my interest in Wilkie Collins was reawakened and I decided it was time to read the biography I bought when I was in the middle of my Collins obsession a few years ago. There were not many to choose from at that time and this one sounded like the best available. I ordered a copy, but by the time it arrived I had moved on to other authors and didn’t feel like reading it anymore. Since then, one or two other biographies have been published which sound more appealing than this one, but it made sense to read the one I already own rather than buying a new one.

The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins was first published in 1988, although the edition I have was revised in 1996. The author, William M. Clarke, is married to Wilkie Collins’ great-granddaughter, Faith Elizabeth Dawson, and maybe because of this connection, the focus of the book is on Wilkie’s private life and relationships with his family and friends rather than on his work. Clarke does attempt to show us the circumstances surrounding the writing of most of Collins’ books, plays and stories and what may have inspired them, but he doesn’t often go into any detailed analysis of these.

After a brief introduction, the book follows Wilkie’s life in chronological order, beginning with his birth in January 1824. Wilkie was the eldest son of the Royal Academy landscape painter William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes, who was also from a family of artists. The first few chapters describe Wilkie’s early childhood, some of which was spent in France and Italy and the rest in London. I found this the least interesting section of the book, but it does show us some of the influences Wilkie was exposed to from an early age which would have had an impact on his future career (an appreciation of Italian art, for example, and familiarity with all the writers, poets and authors who were part of his father’s social circle including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Constable). I also enjoyed reading about Wilkie’s school days and how one of the older boys bullied Wilkie into telling stories late at night!

Clarke then takes us through Collins’ adult life, including his friendship with Charles Dickens, his battle with rheumatic gout (an illness he suffered from for many years), his six-month reading tour of America, and his addiction to laudanum and his unsuccessful attempts to withdraw from it. I’ve mentioned that Clarke doesn’t spend much time discussing Wilkie’s writing, but I did find it interesting to read his thoughts on the effects of laudanum and how in the later stages of his career it may have affected Wilkie’s ability to write descriptions of visual landscapes and construct the intricate plots he was famous for.

There are also some accounts of Collins’ travels with Dickens and I enjoyed reading about these, especially their walking tour of the Lake District (which reminds me that I still haven’t read The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices). It seemed Dickens disapproved of his daughter, Kate, marrying Wilkie’s younger brother, Charles Collins, and this put a strain on their friendship in later years.

But it’s Wilkie’s romantic relationships that are given the most attention, which is understandable as this book is supposed to be about his ‘secret life’. Wilkie never married but was in long-term relationships with two different women, Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd. He lived openly with Caroline and Harriet, her daughter from a previous marriage, while having three children with Martha, whose household he established at a separate address. Each woman was aware of the other and their children even visited each other. I’m sure neither woman could have been very happy with the position they were in but it seems they were both prepared to accept it as this arrangement continued for more than twenty years! Caroline did leave him briefly to marry another man (Wilkie actually attended the wedding) but returned several years later. Collins does seem to have genuinely cared about both of his families but this sort of behaviour must have been scandalous by Victorian standards (and not very admirable by modern standards either) and led to his sister-in-law, Kate, describing him as “as bad as he could be, yet the gentlest and most kind-hearted of men”.

Wilkie’s life was fascinating to read about, but I can’t really say that I enjoyed this book as I found Clarke’s writing style quite dry and boring. This is a book I’ve been dipping into over the last few weeks and reading a few pages at a time rather than ever feeling a compulsion to sit down and read it from cover to cover. It has clearly been thoroughly researched with lots of quotes from Collins himself and from people close to him (references are provided), and there’s plenty of supplementary material – notes, photographs, family trees, bibliography and several appendices, including an analysis of Wilkie’s bank accounts (Clarke’s unique position as the husband of one of Wilkie’s descendants meant he could access this information) but I think I would have been more interested in a book with more balance between Collins’ private life and his writing.

I’m going to finish this post with a question: do you like reading biographies of your favourite authors or do you think knowing too much about an author’s personal life can affect your enjoyment of their work?

The Plantagenets by Dan Jones

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The Plantagenets As someone who has always read mainly fiction, I have been making an effort to read more non-fiction. The type of non-fiction books I find myself drawn to tend to be books about history or biographies of historical figures; I’ve read a few of these recently and The Plantagenets by Dan Jones is one of the best I’ve read. It’s a very long book at almost 700 pages but as the book covers two centuries of history that’s not surprising!

The book begins in the year 1120 with the wreck of the White Ship in which King Henry I lost his only son and heir. This led to the period of English history known as The Anarchy, a civil war with the country divided between supporters of Henry’s daughter, Matilda, and of his nephew, Stephen. It was the son of Matilda and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, the future Henry II, who was England’s first Plantagenet king. Dan Jones tells the story of not only Henry II’s reign, but the reigns of all the Plantagenets who followed, up to and including Richard II who was deposed in 1399. Of course there were several more Plantagenet kings after Richard II, but Jones does explain why he chose to end the book at this point.

I love reading about the Plantagenets and find them far more interesting than the Tudors. However, I have to admit that most of my knowledge of them comes from reading historical fiction and while I certainly think it’s possible to learn through fiction, it was good to have the opportunity to read a factual account of the period. Actually, I found this book almost as entertaining and compelling as a novel anyway; Dan Jones does a great job of making the historical figures he’s writing about come to life and conveying the drama of some of the most important events of their reigns. Instead of just telling us that Henry I’s son died in a shipwreck, for example, he describes the sails of the ship billowing in the wind, the shouts of the crew and the freezing water pouring into the ship. This makes the book very readable, though despite it not being too academic it still feels thoroughly researched and I never had any reason to doubt the accuracy.

Before beginning this book, there were some Plantagenet kings whose lives I was more familiar with than others. I found that I already had quite a good knowledge of Henry II and his relationships with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, his sons and daughters, the knight William Marshal and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket. And I knew the basic facts about Richard I (the Lionheart) and his crusades, and about his brother, King John. The story of the final king featured in the book, Richard II, was also familiar to me, but I had less knowledge of the others in between – Henry III and the three Edwards (I, II and III). I enjoyed learning about Simon de Montfort’s rebellion during the reign of Henry III, the 1326 invasion of England by Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, and the possible fate of Edward II, all subjects I had previously known very little about.

The Plantagenets would be a great choice for any history lover looking for an accessible introduction to a fascinating time period. I’m hoping for a second volume covering the 15th century and the Wars of the Roses.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for review.

The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction by John Guy

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The Tudors Just a short post today to discuss a very short book!

The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction is part of a series of books which offer, as the title suggests, a very short introduction to a wide variety of different topics. Looking at the list of other titles available (and there are hundreds of them) you can choose from subjects as diverse as Folk Music, Feminism or Contemporary Art; Chinese Literature, Biblical Archaeology or American Politics. This one is devoted to the Tudors although, admittedly, I probably didn’t really need a short introduction to them, having recently read Peter Ackroyd’s much longer book on the same subject! I had the opportunity to receive a review copy, though, and was curious to see what the series was like.

In this book, historian John Guy takes us through the reigns of each Tudor monarch – Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I. All of the basic facts are here, presented in a format that is easy to follow and understand. There are also some illustrations, genealogical tables, a chronology and a list of suggested further reading. As I already have quite a good knowledge of the Tudor period, very little of the information in this book was new to me, but for those readers who don’t know much about the Tudors this will be an excellent starting point.

While this was not as interesting or compelling as Ackroyd’s book (and I know it’s not fair to compare the two as they are clearly aimed at different readers and have different purposes) I did enjoy reading this Very Short Introduction and would consider trying another one. As well as being short (just over 100 pages), these books are also very small and would be the perfect size to take with you on a train or bus journey or to fit into a bag or pocket so that you could dip into it when you have a few spare moments to read. And if you don’t feel like actually reading it from cover to cover, it would be a good reference book to keep on your shelf for times when you might want to quickly look up some dates or facts.

You can find a full list of all the Very Short Introductions on the Oxford University Press website.

Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World by Alison Weir

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Elizabeth of York Elizabeth of York’s story is a fascinating one. As the eldest daughter of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville (the alternate spelling of Wydeville is used in this book), Elizabeth lived during one of the most turbulent periods of English history, the Wars of the Roses. She was the sister of the two young princes who it is believed may have been murdered in the Tower of London, she married the first Tudor king, Henry VII, who defeated her uncle Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, and she was also mother to another king, Henry VIII. Despite all of this, Elizabeth is not usually given as much attention as other figures of the period. This new biography, Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World, explores Elizabeth’s life and her historical significance.

Alison Weir is an author of both historical fiction and non-fiction. Although I have read one of her novels, Innocent Traitor, this is the first of her biographies I’ve read and I was very impressed. The book is written in a style that I found engaging and easy to read but it’s also a very thorough, long and detailed account of Elizabeth’s life. An incredible amount of research must have gone into the writing of this book and it contains an absolute wealth of information…I read it on my Kindle and was constantly bookmarking interesting facts and passages.

As well as taking us, in chronological order, through Elizabeth’s entire life from her birth to her death and its aftermath, we are also given lots of details on the social history of the period and what life was like for people who lived during that time: what they ate and drank, the clothes they wore, and the way children were treated and expected to behave. There are lists of dishes served at banquets, descriptions of the duties of ladies-in-waiting and even an appendix giving a full description of every known portrait of Elizabeth. Sometimes there’s too much detail (I didn’t really feel the need to know the names of the nurses of each of Elizabeth’s younger sisters, for example, and the lists of her privy purse expenses and all the gifts she bought and received were a bit overwhelming) but it all helps to build up a full and vivid picture of Elizabeth’s world.

Less is known about Elizabeth than other Tudor figures, so there are times when the focus of the book switches to important political events, conspiracies and other things taking place in the wider world, rather than on Elizabeth herself. The only drawback here is that with so few primary sources remaining to give us information on Elizabeth’s life, Weir can only assume what Elizabeth may have thought or how she felt. This is not really the author’s fault but it would have been interesting to know Elizabeth’s true thoughts on some of these issues, such as the pretenders to the throne who appeared during Henry VII’s reign claiming to be Elizabeth’s lost brothers.

Much as I enjoyed this book, I did have a problem with the portrayal of Richard III. I was aware before I started reading that Alison Weir has a negative opinion of Richard and believes him guilty of all the crimes that he has been accused of, but I still thought there was too much speculation and personal bias in her discussions of him. In the absence of any real evidence, we are told that ‘maybe Elizabeth hated him’ and ‘maybe Cecily was furious with him’, for example. These are not really historical facts, are they? The opinions of other authors and historians who take a more sympathetic view of Richard are dismissed as ‘wishful theories evolved by revisionists’. Anyway, this is just a small criticism of what is otherwise a wonderfully entertaining and informative book. For anyone interested in learning more about this important but often forgotten Tudor queen and her world, I would highly recommend reading Elizabeth of York. It really is a fascinating period of history and Elizabeth deserves to be remembered!

I received a copy of this book for review via Netgalley.

Tudors by Peter Ackroyd

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Tudors Peter Ackroyd has written over thirty non-fiction books, but Tudors is the first one I have read. I read a lot of historical fiction set in the Tudor period, so I thought it would be a good idea to read some factual information about the period and fill in some gaps in my knowledge. Tudors is the second volume in Ackroyd’s new The History of England series and while I would have liked to have started at the beginning with the first book, Foundation, the fact that I started with this one wasn’t a problem.

I was surprised to find that this book does not begin with the life of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. Instead, it starts with his death and the accession to the throne of his son, Henry VIII in 1509. Ackroyd then takes us through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, ending with Elizabeth’s death in 1603 – a whole century of history. Throughout the book, his focus is on the subjects of religious change and reform and once I knew that this was the main theme of the book, the decision to include Henry VII in the previous volume rather than this one made more sense as the reformation of the English church only really began with Henry VIII’s break away from Rome.

As this was my first experience of Peter Ackroyd’s work and I wasn’t sure what to expect, I was pleased to find that Tudors was both well written and well researched, while not being too academic, which makes it a good choice for the general reader with an interest in English history. With so much history to cover, I thought Ackroyd did a good job of selecting which historical events to concentrate on and how long to spend discussing each one. He keeps everything in chronological order, rather than jumping around in time, which makes the book easy to follow and if you’re left wanting to know more about a particular person or topic, an extensive list of further reading is included at the end of the book.

My only problem with this book was that I don’t personally find the subject of religious reform particularly interesting so, for me, some sections were slightly dry and boring. Obviously the English Reformation was of huge importance and I can understand why Ackroyd chose to give it so much attention, but I would have preferred more detail on how these religious changes affected the daily lives of the English people as well as those of the monarchs and nobility. I would also have liked to delve deeper into the characters of some of the fascinating historical figures who lived during the Tudor period, but I felt that Ackroyd was more concerned with chronicling the events of the period rather than looking at character.

Six volumes are planned in this series and Tudors is only the second, so there’s a lot of history still to come!

I received a copy of this book for review from Netgalley.