Gondal is an
imaginary world
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may ...
or
paracosm
A paracosm is a detailed imaginary world thought generally to originate in childhood. The creator of a paracosm has a complex and deeply felt relationship with this subjective universe, which may incorporate real-world or imaginary characters a ...
created by
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 ...
that is found in their
juvenilia. Gondal is an island in the North Pacific, just north of the island Gaaldine. It included at least four kingdoms: Gondal, Angora, Exina and Alcona. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated 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 ...
in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of
speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
.
Invention
The world of Gondal was invented as a joint venture by sisters
Emily and
Anne
Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie.
Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...
. It was a game which they may possibly have played to the end of their lives. Early on they had played with their older siblings
Charlotte
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
and
Branwell in the imaginary country and game of Angria, which featured the
Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...
and his sons as the heroes.
As in the case of Angria, Gondal has its origins in the Glasstown Confederacy, an earlier imaginary setting created by the siblings as children. Glasstown was founded when twelve wooden soldiers were offered to Branwell Brontë by his father, Patrick Brontë, on 5 June 1826.
The soldiers became characters in their imaginary world. Charlotte wrote:
However, 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 Glasstown, hence the name of the Glasstown Confederacy.
Emily and Anne, as the youngest siblings, were often relegated to inferior positions within the game. Therefore, they staged a rebellion and established the imaginary world of Gondal for themselves. "The Gondal Chronicles," which would have given us the full story of Gondal, has unfortunately been lost, but the poems and the diary entries they wrote to each other provide something of an outline.
The earliest documented reference to Gondal is one of Emily's diary entries in 1834, 9 years after the Glasstown Confederacy, when the two younger sisters were aged 16 and 14 respectively; it read: "The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine."
All of the prose chronicles are now lost. The only surviving remnants of the Gondal works are made up of poems, diary entries and some occasional memory aids such as lists of names and characteristics.
World and characters
The Gondal saga is set on two islands in the North and South Pacific. The northern island, Gondal, is a realm of moorlands and snow (based on
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
). The southern island, Gaaldine, features a more tropical climate. Gaaldine is subject to Gondal, which may be related to the period in which the stories were written, the early nineteenth century, when Britain was expanding its empire. It is believed that the stories about them, all now lost, were filled with melodrama and intrigue, and that Anne Brontë used characters that her sister Emily did not. The early part of Gondal's history followed the life of the warlike Julius Brenzaida, a figure reminiscent of the Duke of Zamorna from the siblings' earlier Tales of Angria, and the Prince of Gondal's primary kingdom of Angora. The two loves of Brenzaida's life were Rosina, who became his wife and queen, and Geraldine Sidonia, who gave birth to his daughter, Augusta Geraldin Almeda (A.G.A). Julius was evidently two-faced: after sharing a coronation with Gerald, King of Exina, he had him imprisoned and executed. Julius was eventually assassinated during a civil war and was succeeded by his daughter, A.G.A., who was similar to her father in temperament. She had several lovers, including Alexander of Elbë, Fernando De Samara, and Alfred Sidonia of Aspin Castle, all of whom died. She was eventually murdered during a civil war.
Interpretation
Several of Emily's poems that had been assumed to be allegories for personal experiences were eventually revealed to be episodes in the Gondal saga.
The poems were very personal to Emily: when Charlotte once discovered them, by accident, Emily was furious.
Like
Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
, Emily saw poetry as more of a process than a product.
In most cases, Emily destroyed her notes after transcribing the poems into fair-copy manuscript, and where draft versions survive they show only minor differences. The only draft with major differences that survives is of the Gondal poem "Why ask to know the date—the clime".
The first attempt to reconstruct the Gondal material was made by Fanny Ratchford, in a study published by 1945. She has been accused of confusing the issue by assuming that three characters were intended to be the same individual: Rosina, AGA and Geraldine Sidonia.
The settings were described in detail by Laura Hinkley in ''The Brontës'' (1945), which was used as a source for
Philip Henderson
Philip Prichard Henderson (17 February 1906 – 13 September 1977) was a British novelist and literature critic.
Henderson was born in Barnes, London, in the United Kingdom. After attending Bradfield College he worked as assistant editor of ...
's introduction to ''The Complete Poems'' of Emily Brontë's (1951), a
Folio Society
The Folio Society is a London-based publisher, founded by Charles Ede in 1947 and incorporated in 1971. Formerly privately owned, it operates as an employee ownership trust since 2021.
It produces illustrated hardback editions of classic fic ...
publication.
William Doremus Paden, in ''An Investigation of Gondal'' (1958), created a detailed chronology of Gondal.
The writings about Angria and Gondal have been seen as early forms of both science fiction and
fan fiction
Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settin ...
. According to Andy Sawyer, Director of the Science Fiction Studies MA at the University of Liverpool, "The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction, but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary 'universes' of ''Star Trek'' or Harry Potter. While the sense of fantasy is strong, there are teasing examples of what might be called the beginnings of science fiction."
Specifically, these works would be "RPF" or
real person fiction
Real person fiction or real people fiction (RPF) is a genre of writing similar to fan fiction, but featuring celebrities or other real people.
Before the term "real person fiction" (or "real people fiction") .
Poems
![Gondal Poems](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Gondal_Poems.jpg)
In February 1844, Emily Brontë copied her poems into two notebooks, one containing Gondal poetry and one containing non-Gondal poetry. The non-Gondal notebook was discovered in 1926 by Mr. Davidson Cook and reproduced in the Shakespeare Head edition of Emily's poems. The notebook of Gondal poems was presented to the British Museum in 1933 by the descendants of Mr. George Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co., Charlotte Brontë's publisher. It was published in full in 1938.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gondal (Fictional Country)
Fictional countries
Brontë family
Poetry by Emily Brontë
Poetry by Anne Brontë
Victorian poetry
Fictional islands
Fictional island countries