Capturing the Brontës: The Brontës and Photography (2013)

It is not so much the elephant in the room as the giraffe at the Parsonage with which we concern ourselves here. Capturing The Brontës is a witty exploration of the Brontës and the early history of photography by Charlotte Cory, one of the country’s leading surrealist artist photographers. At first you will laugh and even splutter with indignation at the cheek – and then you will think. And you will never think about the Brontës or the Brontë Parsonage Museum in quite the same way again. Wouldn’t Emily Brontë – who once told the children she taught that she preferred the school dog to any of them – be quite happy portrayed as a horse. Charlotte Brontë informed her publisher in London that a local resident on whom she had based a character would no more suspect her of writing a novel than he would his dog ‘Prince’. Here Prince gets to write Jane Eyre. The brother Branwell who squandered his talents on drink and drugs finally achieves his dream of studying at the Royal Academy and Maria Branwell’s shipwrecked trunk is rediscovered – full of wonderful things that end up in an alternative Visitorian museum within the Parsonage Museum.