Brontë Brussels Past Historians: Joseph Joshua Green.
In July 1842 Dr. Thomas Wheelwright, his wife and five young daughters, arrived in Brussels. The girls studied at the Pensionnat Heger, where Emily Brontë gave them piano lessons. The girls didn't...
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Brontë weekend with the Brontë Society and Waterloo bicentenary
A quite unusual Brussels Brontë Group event took place on Saturday 20 June. Due to the bi-centenary of the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought on 18 June 1815, we had the pleasure to welcome a group...
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Brontë proposal
On Sunday morning the UK Brontë Society group were not too exhausted by the long afternoon at Waterloo the previous day to enjoy a guided walk by Jones Hayden around the site of the Pensionnat Heger...
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The re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo
Saturday the 20th of June 2015 was a particularly memorable day. Starting at 10.00 a.m. we were treated to a superbly enthusiastic talk by Emma Butcher on the Bronte heroes, Wellington and Napoleon and...
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Dutch branch of the Brussels Brontë Group meeting in Dordrecht
On Sunday July 12th 2015 the Dutch branch of the Brussels Brontë Group had a meeting in Dordrecht, in the seventeenth century one of the most important cities of the fledgling Dutch Republic of the...
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Back on the Brontë trail in Ireland!
The 2015 annual holiday was spent as usual in our beloved holiday spot: Ireland. Of course, being an Ireland fanatic and a Brontë fan, it is no wonder that especially the “ Irish connection” of the...
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Jane Eyre and the Harry Potter generation
This piece was written by Justine Gauthier, a student at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels where the Brussels Brontë Group hold their talks. Her year is studying Jane Eyre and she and her...
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‘A contemporary novelist reads Jane Eyre’: Tessa Hadley’s talk to the...
“No one,” they say, “can do the impossible” – or, as Charlotte Brontë herself might have put it, following her time in Belgium, “a l'impossible, nul est tenu” - but Tessa Hadley, acclaimed novelist...
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Launch of ‘Charlotte Brontë’s Secret Love’, the English translation of Jolien...
On 29 October members of the Brussels Brontë Group were among those who gathered at Waterstones for the launch of Charlotte Brontë’s Secret Love, the English translation of Jolien Janzing’s novel...
View ArticleOf pioneers and creative followers – Tessa Hadley on Jane Eyre through a...
One couldn’t help but hang on to every word. The silence was complete, as if everyone was holding their breath in a strange state of benevolent enchantment. It was a talk like we haven’t experienced...
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Two launches of Brontë books by Helen MacEwan
‘Les Soeurs Brontë à Bruxelles’On 3 December ‘Les Soeurs Brontë à Bruxelles’, the French edition of Helen MacEwan’s ‘The Brontës in Brussels’, was launched at Librairie Quartiers Latins in Place des...
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Brussels Brontë Christmas Lunch and Entertainment 2015
The Annual Brontë Christmas lunch took place on Saturday 6 December. As usual Jones Hayden acted as Master of Ceremonies. This year 35 people enjoyed the festive meal, in which the courses alternated...
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2016 – Charlotte Brontë and David Bowie
David Bowie is dead! For all his many fans in the music world, across several generations, the news this week has come as a great shock. We thought he would be around forever, like an undying god, but...
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Broeder en zuster, or the story of Acton Currer Bell
Ten years ago, in an old library catalog I stumbled on a novel, translated in Dutch and published in 1853, by Acton Currer Bell, called Broeder en zuster. Acton Currer Bell? A Brontë novel called...
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International copyright and Villette, or could Charlotte prevent a French...
“How much George Smith had to be initiated into the secret shrouding of the Brussels origin of the book can only be guessed from the fact that Charlotte pledged him to refuse and to prevent a French...
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Preventing a French Villette, or did Charlotte really try?
There’s nothing to suggest Charlotte Brontë did indeed implore Smith, Elder & Co to prevent a French translation, as Gérin said. Many letters she wrote to them have survived, and there’s nothing in...
View ArticleJe me vengerai, or did Charlotte really say that to Madame Heger?
Claire Harman, in her biography of Charlotte Brontë which was published in 2015, says that “Madame Heger accompanied Charlotte to the packet boat at Ostend, on what must have been a dreadfully...
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La maîtresse d’Anglais, ou Le pensionnat de Bruxelles
In my second book, The Pensionnat revisited, I wrote there were two Brussels editions of a French translation of Villette. I wrote half a page about them, and the copyright question and other...
View ArticleOp Woeste Hoogte: Vincent Bijlo is Patrick Brontë
For the Flemish and Dutch speaking readers of this blog:Vincent Bijlo and Mariska Reijmerink, who joined us in Brussels at the Annual BBG Weekend in April last year, and the musicians The Rossettis,...
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Nastavnitsa, ili pansion v Brussele and other early Villette translations
Soon after Villette was published in January 1853, it was translated into other languages. German and Russian translations were the first, in the same year. A Danish version followed, in the winter of...
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