![Branwell Brontë, Map of Angria (c](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Branwell_Bront%C3%AB%2C_Map_of_Angria_%28c._1830%E2%80%931831%29.jpg)
The Glass Town is a
paracosm created and written as a
shared fantasy world by
Charlotte Brontë,
Branwell Brontë,
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë (, commonly ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, ''Wuthering Heights'', now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poet ...
and
Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë (, commonly ; 17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, and the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
Anne Brontë was the daughter of Maria (born Branwell) and Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish cl ...
, siblings of the
Brontë family. 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.
The ''Glass Town'' writings began in December 1827, and as largely unfinished manuscripts, they constitute the
juvenilia
Juvenilia are literary, musical or artistic works produced by authors during their youth. Written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appears as a retrospective publication, some time after the author has become well known for later works.
...
of the Brontë siblings.
History
The Brontë siblings began writing prose and poetry related to their
paracosmic
fantasy world in the 1820s, and in December 1827 produced a novel, ''Glass Town''. Glass Town was founded when twelve wooden soldiers were offered to Branwell Brontë by his father, Patrick Brontë, on 5 June 1826.
It was only during December 1827 that the world really took shape, when Charlotte suggested that everyone own and manage their own island, which they named after heroic leaders: Charlotte had Wellington, Branwell had Sneaky, Emily had
Parry
PARRY was an early example of a chatbot, implemented in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby.
History
PARRY was written in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, then at Stanford University. While ELIZA was a tongue-in-cheek simulation of a Rogeria ...
, and Anne had
Ross Ross or ROSS may refer to:
People
* Clan Ross, a Highland Scottish clan
* Ross (name), including a list of people with the surname or given name Ross, as well as the meaning
* Earl of Ross, a peerage of Scotland
Places
* RoSS, the Republic of Sou ...
. Each island's capital was called Glass Town, hence the name of the Glass Town Confederacy.
The sagas they created were episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which have been published as
juvenilia
Juvenilia are literary, musical or artistic works produced by authors during their youth. Written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appears as a retrospective publication, some time after the author has become well known for later works.
...
. They provided them with an obsessive interest during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary vocations in adulthood. "Much of the saga was formulated only in discussion amongst the creators; knowledge was assumed between the collaborators, who had no need to explain circumstances or background in individual stories".
Between 1829 and 1830, Charlotte produced a dozen issues for the siblings' ''
The Young Men's Magazine'' and an additional four volumes of ''Tales of the Islanders'' (about twenty thousand words) along with "many long stories, plays and poems" and a catalogue to keep track of her work.
Charlotte, in private letters, called Glass Town "her 'world below', a private escape where she could act out her desires and multiple identities".
Charlotte's "predilection for romantic settings, passionate relationships, and high society is at odds with Branwell's obsession with battles and politics and her young sisters' homely North Country realism, none the less at this stage there is still a sense of the writings as a family enterprise".
"Branwell was at the centre of this universe, often dictating the events of the saga or writing long parliamentary speeches and war epics".
Simon Armitage
Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds.
He has published over 20 collections of poetr ...
, a creative partner of the
Bronte Parsonage Museum, wrote that Branwell "was driving the whole show. He had this flurried imagination and they seemed to be wildly encouraging of each other".
However, from 1831 onwards, Emily and Anne 'seceded' from the ''Glass Town Confederacy'' to create a 'spin-off' called ''
Gondal'', which included many of their poems.
This occurred at the time when Charlotte left her siblings to go and study at Roe Head.
Emily and Anne kept writing about their world "into early adulthood".
After 1831, Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of the ''Glass Town Confederacy'' called ''Angria''. "At the end of 1839,
harlotteBrontë said goodbye to her fantasy world in a manuscript called Farewell to Angria. 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. So she said goodbye to her characters, scenes and subjects.
..She wrote of the pain she felt at wrenching herself from her 'friends' and venturing into lands unknown".
Both Branwell and Emily continued to write about their worlds until their deaths.
World and characters
Glass Town was built around "the Great Bay at the confluence of rivers" in a fictional
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...
.
The manuscripts were originally centred on "the Glass Town Federation and its principal city Verdopolis (initially called the Great Glass Town), and then moved to Angria, a new kingdom created in 1834 to the west of the Federation.
..The Brontës filled this imaginative space with their own version of early nineteenth-century society with its international relations and domestic affairs
.. Wars and political upheavals dominate the events of the saga throughout its history".
In an early manuscript (1826–28) by Charlotte Brontë, "there is a map, which is carefully divided into four provinces (one for each sibling). The two lists of places explain what belongs to Wellington and what belongs to Parry".
According to the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, the Brontë siblings named their toy soldiers "the Twelves or ‘Young Men’ and created names and personalities that brought them to life.
..As Wellington was Charlotte’s ‘Young Man’ and Parry was Emily’s, this is evidence of a partnership of the imagination between the two sisters. The mention of the toy soldiers dates the little book to at least 1826, when the toy soldiers were given to the children".
In the manuscript ''The History of the Young Men'' (1830–31) by Branwell Brontë, Branwell chronicled the establishment of the Glass Town Federation colony by "twelve adventurers who set sail for West Africa" from his persona of Glass Town historian Captain John Bud.
In this manuscript, "Branwell drew a map of the Glass Town Federation complete with mountain ranges, rivers and trade routes. It shows the four kingdoms run by the siblings: Wellington’s Land, Parry’s Land, Ross’s Land and Sneaky’s Land. Being the baby of the family, Anne has the diminutive kingdom of Ross's Land.
..Also shown on the map, outlined in red, is the cosmopolitan district. This contains the Great Glass Town capital, (later known as ‘Verreopolis’ or ‘Verdopolis’). This grew to be a thriving city of factories, prisons, palaces and dungeons. As explained in the history, it even has a labyrinthine network of caves beneath, harbouring criminals and low life".
Early characters were "literal transmogrifications of
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
and
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
", however, the Brontës eventually "focused on developing two of their own characters
.. Zamorna, the Duke of Wellington's son, and Alexander Percy, known throughout the later works as Northangerland.
..Although both were regular characters in Charlotte and Branwell's early Glass Town writings
.. it is not until 1834, the siblings' new kingdom Angria, and Zamorna's subsequent marriage to Northangerland's daughter, Mary, that the duo's incredible dynamic is fully unleashed.
..Betrayal and revenge are paramount in the Angrian saga".
Existing versions
![Charlotte Brontë's Foundling](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB%27s_Foundling.jpg)
"In 1829 and 1830, Charlotte and Branwell cobbled the pages together from printed waste and scrap paper, perhaps cut from margins of discarded pamphlets. They wrote with steel-nibbed pens, which tend to blot, yet the even script demonstrates their practiced hand".
These hand-bound books measure about 2.5 by 5 centimeters.
"Only about 20 volumes of Brontë juvenilia are known to remain. Harvard holds nine, the Brontë Museum at the family home in England owns a few, and the remaining are scattered among museums and private collectors".
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
's collection originated from when
Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte’s husband, sold volumes "after her death to a collector, who gave them to poet and fellow collector
Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.
Life
Amy Lowell was born on Febru ...
; she donated the set to
Houghton Library in 1925".
In the 1970s, Christine Alexander, of the
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...
, began to track down the Brontë juvenilia to transcribe and organize it;
when she began, "only about a third of the manuscripts had been published".
Thomas James Wise
Thomas James Wise (7 October 1859 – 13 May 1937) was a bibliophile and thief who collected the Ashley Library, now housed by the British Library, and later became known for the literary forgeries he printed and sold.
Collecting career
Wise b ...
had acquired a large amount of the manuscripts from Nicholis and "subsequently sold off most of the collection in small bits and pieces
.. Over ten publicly accessible repositories in the U.S. and England contain significant amounts of manuscripts, sometimes dividing single works among them; and numerous private collectors and other libraries have a page or more, all of which had to be found, identified, dated and virtually stitched into original places to create the chronological record".
In addition to contacting libraries and archives, Alexander traced old sales catalogues and "travelled all over the United States and Canada on a Greyhound bus, knocking on doors of private collectors, eventually finding more than 100 unpublished Charlotte Bronte manuscripts and an equal number of unknown drawings and paintings by the Brontes".
Alexander has over the decades since continued to publish an updated catalogue on the various locations of the manuscripts, including private collections.
The
Bronte Parsonage Museum purchased one of these manuscripts in 2019.
''The'' ''New York Times'' reported that "the 19-page, 4,000-word manuscript measures about 1.5 by 2.5 inches. It features vividly dramatic hand-lettered ads
.. as well as three stories set in the fictional settlement of Glass Town, including one featuring a scene that seems to be a precursor to the famous one in '
Jane Eyre
''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first ...
' where Mr. Rochester’s wife sets fire to his bed. The Brontë Parsonage already owns four of the six volumes of The Young Men’s Magazine. (The whereabouts of the remaining one have been unknown since around 1930, according to the museum)".
Reception
Upon the publication of ''Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Writings'' by
Oxford World's Classics
Oxford World's Classics is an imprint of Oxford University Press. First established in 1901 by Grant Richards and purchased by OUP in 1906, this imprint publishes primarily dramatic and classic literature for students and the general public. I ...
, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' highlighted that the Brontë siblings created depictions of "fantastical, magical kingdoms, steeped in violence, politics, lust and betrayal.
..Written in dozens of miniature books, these manuscripts – with curious, secretive titles such as ''A Peep into a Picture Book'', ''The Spell'', ''A Leaf from an Unopened Volume'' – are not only an astonishing example of craftsmanship, but contain extraordinary, uncensored content".
Claire Harman, a British biographer, highlighted that the Brontë juvenilia consists of poetry, plays, and magazines "with accompanying maps and histories" and is over 50,000 words; "much of it set in imaginary places like Glass Town and Angria, with interlocking casts of countless characters. Harman compares it aptly to computer gaming — although the Brontes created it all from scratch".
In 2011, the Brontë juvenilia was included in a science fiction-focused exhibition at the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
.
Guest curator
Andy Sawyer
Andrew "Andy" Sawyer (born 1952) is a librarian, critic and editor, as well as an active part of science fiction fandom (although he himself has not written much science fiction). He was educated at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, Dover ...
pointed "to the way the Brontës created favourite characters and settings in the same way science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary 'universes' of Star Trek or Harry Potter" and said "the sense of fantasy is strong and there are examples of what might be called the beginnings of science fiction".
Culture24
Culture24, originally the 24 Hour Museum, is a British charity which publishes websites, ''Culture24'', ''Museum Crush'' and ''Show Me'', about visual culture and heritage in the United Kingdom, as well as supplying data and support services to ...
highlighted that "the Brontës featured themselves as Gods in their worlds, of which they wrote long sagas in tiny micro-script, as well as using both fictional and real-life characters, reminiscent of the creations of JRR Tolkein
icand CS Lewis.
..Glass Town originated from games the children would play with toy soldiers and its map, drawn by Branwell, was based on a map on real explorations of America in the 19th Century".
Christine Alexander, a Brontë juvenilia historian, wrote that "this fictitious world established in Africa bears little resemblance to Africa
.. ndowes as much to fairy tale and the ''
Arabian Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
'' as it does to geographical descriptions of what was known as 'the dark continent'".
On the manuscript ''The History of the Young Men'' (1830–1831), the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
highlights that "it is impossible to ignore the
imperialist
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
ideology of the 19th century in this fictional history. This was an era when Britain was a global empire, one which was built on expansion and conquests, with little regard for native inhabitants. We see exactly this played out in the Brontës' imagined world. On reaching the shores of West Africa, the Twelves (as the company is known) set up a colonial outpost, and lay claim to land as their own. After building their first settlement – Twelves Town – they find themselves at war with the native Ashantee tribe. The Twelves win, which impresses the British Government. One of the Twelves, Arthur Wellesley, is chosen by the British to lead troops against the Emperor Napoleon. He defeats Napoleon and returns victorious to Glass Town where he becomes king".
Emma Butcher wrote, in the ''
Victorian Periodicals Review
The ''Victorian Periodicals Review'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1968, under the editorship of Michael Wolff and Dorothy Deering, as the ''Victorian Periodical Newsletter''. It obtained its current name in 1979. The journal ...
'', that "the Brontë children grew up in an era when post-Waterloo commentary on events and personalities kept the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
at the forefront of popular discussion.
..The early writings of Glass Town (1829–34) adopted and reimagined historical and contemporary people, place names and events.
..Although convoluted and fictional, Charlotte and Branwell's depiction of their juvenile heroes—first Wellington and Napoleon and then Zamorna and Northangerland—provides insight into cotemporary reaction to Wellington's and Napoleon's eminent personalities".
In popular culture
* In
Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has a ...
’s young-adult fiction novel ''The Glass Town Game'' (2017), "Glass Town turns into a
Narnia-like world of its own, and the Brontës find themselves pulled through into their own creation".
*In the comic series ''
Die
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...
'' (2018) by writer
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Michael Gillen (; born 30 September 1975) is a British comic book writer and former video game and music journalist. In comics, Gillen is known for ''Phonogram'' and ''The Wicked + The Divine'', both co-created with artist Jamie McKelvie ...
and artist
Stephanie Hans
Stephanie Hans is a French illustrator and comics artist. She is best known for co-creating the series '' Die'', a three-time Hugo Award-finalist, and British Fantasy Award winner, with writer Kieron Gillen. Hans has worked with Marvel Comics, ...
, three of the locations on the
icosahedron
In geometry, an icosahedron ( or ) is a polyhedron with 20 faces. The name comes and . The plural can be either "icosahedra" () or "icosahedrons".
There are infinitely many non- similar shapes of icosahedra, some of them being more symmetrica ...
-shaped world are Gondal, Angria, and Glass Town based on the Brontë juvenilia.
* In
Isabel Greenberg
Isabel Greenberg is a British graphic novelist and illustrator. Her first book, ''The Encyclopedia of Early Earth'', was published in 2013 by Jonathan Cape in the UK, Little Brown in the US and Random House Canada, Random House in Canada.
Career
...
's 2020 graphic novel ''Glass Town'', parts of the Brontë juvenilia are retold and intersected with the lives of four Brontë children.
* In Miriam Pultro's 2021 meta rock musical, ''Glass Town'' is a band the four Brontës have created together.
*In Nicola Friar's novel ''A Tale of Two Glass Towns'', Glass Town has loosely inspired the forthcoming novel.
References
{{Authority control
Fictional elements introduced in 1827
Brontë family
Fantasy worlds
Collaborative fiction