Literary Walk ~ In the footsteps of the Brontës...

 My latest literary walk took me into Brontë country and a trip to Haworth in Yorkshire.

Home of Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë

Patrick and Maria Brontë and their six young children arrived in Haworth in April 1820. 

Patrick had been appointed as the perpetual curate of St Michael’s and All Angels church in Haworth, and the attractive parsonage at the top of the village was to be their home. However, tragedy was about to strike the family, when less than a year later, Maria Brontë died, leaving her six young children in the care of her husband and her sister, Elizabeth.

This shows the parsonage and the adjacent churchyard.
The rooks in the trees above keep up a cacophony of  raucous sound 

This  shows the cobbled street at the side of the parsonage
which the Brontës would have used to get into the village of Haworth

This is The Black Bull Pub
where Branwell Bronte was a frequent visitor.

Haworth is a pretty Yorkshire town

but flat shoes are preferable on the cobblestones!

View along Main Street which shows the cobbled street

View down Main Street against the back drop of the
Yorkshire hills

St Michael and All Angels Church
Haworth.


The stone shows where the gate once stood which the Brontes used to get into the churchyard
from the parsonage.

East Window
St Michaels and All Angels Church
Haworth

Brontës in Memoriam

This view from the parsonage no doubt inspired Emily when she wrote
Wuthering Heights.

I enjoyed my tour of the parsonage, it's a fascinating experience to wander around the home of the Brontës. To see the dining room where Charlotte, Emily and Anne sat late at night composing their great literary works gives a better insight into their world.

There is no photography allowed inside the parsonage, but you'll find more details
at

The Brontë Society & Brontë Parsonage Museum

All photographs ©Digital Images 2013

Literary Walk ~ The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

First published March 8th 1937

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.

Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (published in 1949) and the satirical novella "Animal Farm" (1945)—they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author.







From Goodreads

Although George Orwell grew up in the relative comfort of the English middle class, his socialist convictions and general sense of fairness led him to hate his country's deeply ingrained class structure. That perspective permeates this book, but the most striking elements are the quotidian details of life that Orwell observes in his first-person account of the lives of coal miners and others in the poor north of England.

Wigan Pier is almost too realistic at times, as Orwell brings his unparalleled powers of observation to portray the wretched conditions of the working class. That Orwell may have slanted his reporting to make things look worse than they were is a question that does not lessen the book's interest.

My Literary 

Walk

As these images suggest Wigan Pier is still alive and well and
slightly more picturesque than in Orwell's time in
Wigan in 1936

The Real Wigan Pier

©Digital Images 2013 

Wigan Pier 2013

©Digital Images 2013