Let's Talk about the Brontës
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2022
- #Victober
In which I talk about the Brontës . . .
Brontë Week (from back in 2016): • Brontë Week
Books Mentioned
The Professor, Charlotte Brontë: / 773147.the_professor
Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë: / 298230.agnes_grey
Shirley, Charlotte Brontë: / 31168.shirley
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë: / 337113.the_tenant_of_w...
Villette, Charlotte Brontë: / 31173.villette
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë: / 10210.jane_eyre
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë: / 6185.wuthering_heights
My Debut Novel
My debut novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall, is coming out in early 2023.
Pre-order from Waterstones (UK): www.waterstones.com/book/the-...
Pre-order from Amazon (UK): www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Hart...
Pre-order (US): bit.ly/HartwoodHallUS
Pre-order (Canada): bit.ly/HartwoodHallCAN
Goodreads: / the-secrets-of-hartwoo...
General Links
My website: www.katielumsden.co.uk
Facebook: / justbooksandthings
Twitter: / katiejlumsden
Instragram: / katiejlumsden
Goodreads: / katie-lumsden
NaNoWriMo: nanowrimo.org/participants/kat...
Email: katie.booksandthings@gmail.com
I feel like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are in a universe of their own, one virtually unreachable. That said, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is my favorite.
I actually really enjoyed the Professor, I found it a very chill, calm, relaxing story, a nice glimpse into that point in time, by the ending we see a glimpse into an actually happy marriage in victorian time which is so rare
🙌🏼🙌🏼WUTHERING HEIGHTS SUPREMACY 🙌🏼🙌🏼
That iconic gem remains unmatched ❤❤❤
It's just fantastic :)
My first Bronte book was Jane Eyre and I fell in love completely, now I need to read all of them. Great video! Hugs from Brazil~
my favourite Bronte is Anne without a doubt. I so wish she'd been able to write more.
Agreed!
I need new copies of the Brontës ... they're all falling apart. Wuthering Heights towers above all the others, but I'm fond of Agnes Grey. She was more than half tempted to shove Master Bloomfield down that well if you ask me, making her a particularly sympathetic character. 🙂
Jane Eyre is definitely my favorite. I am one of those people who were too much shocked by the overpowering hatred and revenge in Wuthering Heights to really love it, but I couldn't stop reading it either. My favorite part of Villette is the first few chapters which tell the story of how 6-year-old Paulina falls in love with 16-year-old Graham--humorous and bittersweet at the same time. I particularly love the first chapter of Agnes Grey which so beautifully and concisely sets the stage for what is to follow.
Oh, just love hearing you talk about all the Victorian authors! Thank you!
Every time you post a new vid, the whole fucken planet shifts a bit on the z-axis.
Jane Eyre, without a doubt, is one of the best books to introduce one to Victorian literature. I’ve read two novels from these sisters, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey, and much of their poetry, especially Anne’s. After listening to your novel rankings, I think I will read Wuthering Heights next, since I’ve not read Emily’s novel. I recently finished the 1983 adaptation of Jane Eyre, which I enjoyed a lot. Thanks for an interesting video, Katie, I always learn something that makes reading more enjoyable!
My favorite Brontë book is Jane Eyre. It’s the book that brought me into the classics. I love how strong Jane is and all she endured to survive in her world. And I love your channel. Thanks so much for your insight into the Victorian period.
I love them so much that I don't even know what else to say about them anymore... I wish it was possible to go back in time and meet them even if for brief minutes
“Tenant of Wildfell Hall” is my favorite, maybe because of Helen Graham’s clear-eyed determination to escape her situation for the sake of her son and also I read it relatively recently. Also, as someone else commented it was most realistic. “Jane Eyre” ranks 2nd, Jane is also a determined heroine. “Wuthering Heights” ranks 3rd because I can’t help but admire Emily’s writing but gosh, isn’t Cathy a super annoying character.
After Charlotte created Bertha, she placed a milder version of an obstacle type woman hovering in each of her stories, Robert Mohr’s sister in Shirley and Madam in Villette, the head master’s wife. (I haven’t yet read a The Professor) It seems as if these women seemingly represent the real life wife of Charlotte’s unrequited love, the Headmaster of the Brussels school where she taught for a brief time. (Just my musing.)
I love seeing your face light up talking about these. I haven’t finished all the Brontë books yet but I adored Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey. I am currently reading The Professor but not feeling super engaged with it so it may be a DNF we shall see 👀❤️
Thanks, Charlie :) The Professor certainly isn't the most compelling XD
I think Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are exceptional books for generating conversation and debate; they're books I still think about regularly.
Thanks for reminding us that Wuthering H. was not a contemporary novel (like the works of Currer and Acton), but a stylized and melodramatic historical fiction. Perhaps because neither Jane Eyre nor WH are realistic novels (the latter is nearly a horror story) I've never seriously threatened finishing either. Perhaps the more-realistic non-orphan Annie would be a better fit?
Chris (the next commentor below) claims the Bronte's are in a universe of their own, but I'd guess they were (instead) perilously adjacent to the psycho ward.........WAY too much wind, bad factory air, low-Ph drinking water, and tea made for l'eau de corpse.
My favorite is also Wuthering Heights! It is one of the first classics I ever fell in love with! I have only read Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights though. I did try Shirley twice but never got into it. I can say that Charlotte’s use of French does drive me a bit bonkers but I understand why she did it. Thanks for another lovely video!
You know my favourite is wuthering heights and I think it always will be. Yes the professor is my least favourite.. I think I will re read all the bronte books in a couple of years as apart from my top two I’ve only read the others once. I love Anne brontes books so I wonder if re reading them will change my rankings 🧐
I really enjoy the Brontes, my favorite is Emily since I recently read her novel for the first time and I was really surprised📖
My ranking of novels I've read so far:
1. Wuthering Heights🖤
2. Jane Eyre
3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
4. Agnes Gray
I still have to discover the rest of Charlotte's novels, maybe next year I will also reread Jane Eyre, and I'm not so sure that I love it like the first time😅
I read Jane Eyre (the only novel I read by the Bronte sisters) last October. I loved it. My husband gave me Wuthering Heights for Christmas last year and it is the next book on my list to read. I hope I enjoy it, they say its very atmospheric so I'm saving it for the dark winter evenings. Your videos are so informational Katie and gives me the confidence to read more classics. I have only read a few so far but I find classics more stimulating to my mind as to contemporary novels (maybe I'm reading the wrong contemporary sort of novels) so yay I have found an era or genre? of books that I enjoy because of you. P.S. you must be a time managment wizard to fix in everything with your work, there is great admiration here.
Thanks very much, Elaine - glad to hear you've been loving classics lately :)
My favourites are The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey. My least favourite is Villette. I haven't read the Professor. The characters are quite different from the usual victorian characters especially the men which made it more interesting. Happy Victober!
Love this amazing and fantastic video of the beautiful and amazing sisters please stay safe and enjoy your reading love your family friend John ❤❤
Absolutely love your choices and your selections!
I loved this! I first read Jane Eyre when I was 13 too. The Brontës fascinate me and I just can't seem to hear enough about them so I was thrilled to watch this.
Yay, I've been waiting for this video! You did not disappoint. 🙂 Where to begin? I'm probably in the small percentage who truly found "The Professor" delightful. Reading it as her first novel, I especially enjoyed the dialogue and found much of it laugh-out-loud amusing! I was thrilled to find this humorous side to Charlotte. "Villette" I re-read recently and enjoyed it more the second time (first time was at university). This doesn't happen often but as soon as I finished it, I wanted to start it all over again ... I didn't want to leave this world. As one who suffers from depression, I could totally relate with Lucy's character and what she went through. My girlfriend read "Jane Eyre" for the first time at age 56, and after she finished telling me her thoughts on the book I asked her, "Yes, but what did you think about JANE?!!" Her response: "Oh, Jane's my hero!" LOVED THAT!!! Regarding "Shirley", my understanding is back in the day, Shirley was a man's name ... it was written just after Emily's death and the character of Shirley was written with Emily in mind. Reading it in that light adds far more dimension to the character and the story. Also, for an American reader, the beginning of the novel is quite a history lesson which I found both interesting and fun (had to put on my research cap). Last comment / question: why don't any of the volumes of "Villette" have translation footnotes for all of the French language used? Thank you Katie! 💕
My favourite Brontë novel is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, followed by Agnes Grey. I love Anne Brontë's realism. (I like some of Anne Brontë's poems very much, too, they are so clear and yet moving.)
On rank three are Villette and Jane Eyre, I cannot decide which of them I love most.
Much less I like Shirley and The Professor, and I definitely don't like Wuthering Heights. I've read it at least twice (I've a vague remembrance that I already read it as a teenager long, long ago). I can see that there is ingenuity in that novel, and I like the narrative structure - but it just annoyes me!
That is totally fair enough - Wuthering Heights is such an odd novel XD
I loved this video so much, I’m really lucky that I live in West Yorkshire very near to Howarth where the Brontë Parsonage is. I totally agree with your ranking of the books too .
I read and loved "Wuthering.." and "Jane Eyre" years ago. Then I read "The Tenant..." And "Shirley" very different but did enjoy them so much 💓
I've read "Agnes Grey " "The Professor" since and felt these are not as great novels and it's certainly better to start with these two and carry on with others... Hope to read "Villette" soon 💖
I love your enthusiansm! Jane Eyre is my favorite and the one book I have re-read the most.
It was my first Victorian novel (age 12 I think) I love the Brontë novels, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell tied for second place.
This was fascinating! I watched it while on a treadmill and the time flew! By coincidence I finished Wuthering Heights today for the first time. I had two previous DNF attempts exactly because it is so weird and dark! I also loved your recent video comparing Victorian authors and my next Victober read is Hester and I’m So looking forward to it. Thanks for your brilliant work 💖
Thanks, Julie :) Wuthering Heights so is weird and dark and I love it so much. I hope you like Hester!
❤ hi Katie I’m re-reading Jane Eyre this month but I remember reading Wuthering Heights in my 20s and loving it. It should be on my TBR next year. I haven’t read the lead yet but last year I read the tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Gray. They’re very different books and I actually think I liked Agnes Gray better. But, maybe I just like the main character better. Aloha
this was lovely! 🥰
Just wanted to recommend a literary history called "The Bronte Myth" by Lucasta Miller. I heard about it watching a recent interview with the director (Frances O'Conner) of the new Emily Bronte movie. O'Conner said it was the most helpful book in her research. Anyhow, it's really interesting esp. how Gaskell helped form the image of Charlotte Bronte and what her agenda was. A really interesting book with lots of good tidbits. Covers reactions to Brontes over 200 years. Lucasta Miller is a witty writer, well worth a read.
Thanks, that sounds super interesting!
I love the Brontës!
I think my least favourite is the Professor. I read it after Villette, and like you, I feel like Villette did it a lot better.
As for my favourite, I go back and forth between Villette and Wuthering Heights.
I adore Wuthering Heights and Isabella fascinates me - Hareton is fantastic too. The structure is brilliant and every time I read it, I find something new and it's one I can read over and over.
But Villette, I think might take the edge at the moment. Lucy is so strange and fascinating, the whole novel is bizarre and interesting, ans Ginevra is my favourite character ever (weird choice, I know). I also wrote about Villette (mostly Ginevra) for my MA dissertation so maybe it's more special because of that?
Enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the Brontës!!
Your MA dissertation on Ginevra must have been fascinating - what an interesting character she is.
Hi. I just finished my first read of _Wuthering Heights,_ and I read the Wikipedia page on Emily, and it seems there is little known about her life. But I feel Emily told us all about herself in her novel.
Wonderful! How lucky are we to have had the Brontës. My favorite Brontë is Villette, but still need to figure out how I’d rank The Professor, Agnes Gray, and Shirley once I read them! : )
Villette is just so fantastic.
I just recently finished all the Bronte books by finally reading The Professor! I completely agree with you that its my least favourite - its grand but nothing special. My favourite is probably Villette; although I liked Jane Eyre as well I feel like Villette has more going on in it and I find the characters more interesting. For me if the first half of Jane Eyre could be merged with the second half of Villette it would be the perfect book 😊
I do sort of agree - wouldn't that be a wonderful book :)
Coincidence: the scene where Jane tries to hide in the garden was written well. I couldn't help copying it into my informal journal (just the other day!).
Jane Eyre is my forever favorite, but I also love their other novels too! Except the Professor. That book is a mess. Haha!
The first Bronte book that I tried to read was Jane Eyre. (I say tried because I was too little to understand it, I could hardly hold the book.) I have sense read and re-read Jane Eyre, It is my all time favorite book. I have also read, more then once, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights. I love them both. I am in the process of listening to Villette, I am not enjoying it as much, I think mostly for the reason that you gave. I am going to read it next time, I think I'll get more out of it. I have the other books on my list.
I loved Bronte Week (was it really that long ago?!)
It really was!!
Have read all around the Brontes. But haven't actually read them, I liked that miniseries about them that was on Masterpiece theater. To Walk Silent, I think.
I really want to see that one.
Hi, I’ve been following your channel for a little bit and it’s given me some great inspiration for future reads. I’m currently in the middle of reading Anne Brontë to which I’ll also be doing a video for (I’m very much an amateur when it comes to booktube) but I really resonate with your comments about Anne and realism and wanted to mention this in the video but wanted to ask if you would mind if I credited this observation to you and mentioned your channel with it as I don’t want to pass this insight off as my own 😊
Hi Dan! Absolutely, of course - please do feel free to talk about my thoughts and link my channel in the description. Thanks :)
@@katiejlumsden thank you and of course I’ll mention the channel both in the video and in the description 😊
I only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (twice). WH was so disturbing, that i loved it! JE on the other hand i didn't. I found it quite ableist. I really need to read something of Anne's.
I can not recommend highly enough Patricia Routledge reading Wuthering Heights. I was enthralled and obsessed by her version. It was like discovering the book for the first time.
Agreed, I love that audiobook!
loved this presentation. will you be coming to America for a book tour to promote your first novel?
Probably not - book tours, especially international ones, are pretty uncommon for debut authors, and the US is a long way away!
Charlotte tried to get the Professor published first
I love the Brontës, I've read each book at least 10 times. My favourite is Jane Eyre but my least favourite is The Professor though I still love it, it is the weakest novel.
You mentioned they had one brother but they also had two other sisters. Both died relatively young.
I just finished Villette and I'm still under its spell. It's only my second novel by Charlotte (I've been rereading Jane Eyre for more than 25 years now but never had tried another novel by her until recently) and my third Brontë in total (Agnes Grey is the other one). I think Jane Eyre is a better book in terms of structure but I loved Villette more. It's my favourite for now 🙂
It's such a wonderful novel :)
It's great to see that many people like Villette. I too think it is a book that should have been more known. For me it is Charlotte Bronte that is my favourite because I like the personal touch, the psychology and the erotic feeling of her books. I can't decide between Jane Eyre and Villette. The first makes me happy and is a great book that softens your heart. The second is a very intriguing riddle and at parts is even better written than Jane Eyre but its subject is gloomier.
I've read the Professor before Villette and it did not make it better. As of last year I have read all of the Brontes novels and I think my favourite is Jane Eyre, but it and Wuthering Heights I read when I was 16 and haven't returned to. Wuthering Heights I feel like I need to reread as I thought going in it was a romance and wasn't till I started watching your videos I realised it wasn't; so I need to give it another chance.
As always I enjoy your videos and your enthusiasm. If I can give my ranking, here is mine from best to least Brontë novels based on what I’ve read so far. I’m reading Shirley for Victober and I decided not to read the Professor because I did not like Villette. 1. Jane Eyre. I love this book! I don’t think I need to explain why. 2. Wuthering Heights. I hate all characters in this book, but in a good way. Even the ones that are not even despicable, I did not like. Every time Joseph spoke, I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted to tell Nelly, she is too much of a bystander. What amazes me is how Emily Brontë made me like this novel where I hated everyone. Weird! 3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. A solid good book. 4. Agnes Grey. Thought this was ok. Agnes Grey annoyed me. 5. Villette. I did not like this story. I really started to dislike Lucy Snow as the story progressed. However, Charlotte Brontë’s writing is beautiful in this book. I’ll see where Shirley ends in this my list this month
If you didn't like Villette chiefly because of Lucy Snow, then you might find The Professor more likeable than you think.
Hiii May someone tell me if Villette has any inappropriate scenes ( kisses, 18 + ) I can’t read these
Agnes Grey is my favorite so far and Wuthering Heights is my least favorite so far. Sorry. I have not read anything from Charlotte except Jane Eyre.
Wuthering Heights is not for everyone - it is a strange book indeed.
Advice: if you have friends who speak French it is better than Google translate
The tenant of wildfell Hall to me is more of a pioneer and historically important book for women, than it was an enjoyable read. I found it so dragging and miserable... Very depressing... But Anne is remarkable for having written about such a subject