On this day...

King William IV died in 1837, leading to the ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne of England and beginning arguably one of the most productive literary eras. Described by Matthew Arnold as 'a deeply unpoetical age', the Victorian era was dominated by the novel. Yet these works were not the managable romances of Austen, but heavy tomes of social injustice - their tortuous syntax leading Henry James, guilty himself of several, to name them 'loose baggy monsters'. The main culprits include Charles Dickens, author of almost a dozen major novels, George Eliot of 'Middlemarch' fame and the man of tragic persuasion, Thomas Hardy.

In conjunction with the growing suffrage movement, the Victorian era also saw the rise of the female novelist, most notably highlighted by the Bronte sisters, but supplemented also by names such as Elizabeth Gaskell. English drama is perhaps harder to find, but the one man could make up for it all, as the brilliance and wit of Oscar Wilde takes the stage by storm, preceeding the later George Bernard Shaw, and overshadowing the foreign imports of Chekhov and Ibsen. Despite Arnold's claim, Victorian literature was by no means devoid of poetry, producing Robert Browning, master of the dramatic monologue, blank verse devotee Alfred Lord Tennyson and romantic poet Christina Rossetti.

On this day...

English author Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816. At the age of eight, Bronte was sent with three of her sisters to a Clergy Daughter's school. She believed that its poor conditions, later refelcted in the depiction of as Lowood school in 'Jane Eyre', led to her permament ill-health and caused the death of her two eldest sisters. Once at home, she and her remaining siblings, began to write stories, and it was at the age of 17 that she wrote her first novella, 'The Green Dwarf'.

Bronte spent the next decade as a teacher, for the most part in Brussels, and used the experience as inspiration for 'The Professor' and 'Villette'. In 1946, she and her two sisters, Emily and Anne, published a collection of poetry under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Although only two copies were sold, they each went on to pursue their own individual literary careers with great posthumous success; indeed 'Jane Eyre' is now often hailed as having an important impact in feminist literature. Bronte married in 1854, yet, pregnant with her first child, she died in 1855, at the age of 38.

On this day...

English novelist and poet, Emily Bronte died in 1848 at the age of 40. Part of the famous trio of sisters, know by respective pen names Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell, Emily had her first major publishing success with a joint collection of poems in 1846. Yet her real success was found in her gothic novel, 'Wuthering Heights', oublished in the same year as sister Charlotte's 'Jane Eyre'. The haunting and passionate love story is said to have been reflective of Emily's character; Charlotte stating it to be 'powerful and peculiar' and inspiring 'an anguish of wonder and love'. Such difficulty of character continued right until the end; she refused to allow a doctor to visit, only consenting to Charlotte's pleas a few hours before she died. Her death came at a time of great personal loss for the Brontes, her brother Branwell dying only three months previous, and sister Anne was to follow the next May.

Note to Self: Books sell...

Yesterday at Christie's, saw one of the most impressive literary auctions in some time. Film producer William E. Self sold his entire library of rare editions; 144 lots producing a sale total of $4,896,625. The highlights were two collections of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe; the first, a handwritten manuscript which sold for $830,500, the second, a first edition of 'Tamerlane and Other Poems', which went for $662,500. The list of other authors' work is extensive, and includes names from both sides of the Atlantic, such as; Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Walt Whitman. The full list of lots, including pictures and details, can be found here