This is a decent account of the lives of the Bronte family, from Patrick's origins as the son of poor peasant farmers in Ireland, to the tragically short lives and literary careers of his famous trio of daughters, all of whom he outlived, but who for the most part emerge here as three distinctive individuals. The Brontes' story is a wonderful soap opera of characters in the relatively liberal atmosphere of the Haworth parsonage, with the early deaths of so many of them, played out against a background of poverty and disease in the wider community in early 19th century Yorkshire. Unfortunately, this book was littered with typos, including inaccurate punctuation that irritated me considerably. ( )

1651 The Brontes, by Brian Wilks (read 5 Aug 1981) This is a shallow illustrated book. Much of it was repetitious for me, since I had just read Margot Peters' stunning biography of Charlotte, except this book had good things to say of Charlotte's father, and spent time on his early life. I am inclined to think there must have been good things in him, to have produced and reared such exceptional children. Some of the pictures in the book are very good--apparently Haworth today is very different from the 1840's.
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