by Deborah Lutz
—Patricia Hagen, Star Tribune
“This is a fine book, rich, immersive and illuminating, glowing with the life of the Brontës and their wild genius.”
—Shahidha Bari, Times Higher Education
“The Brontë Cabinet is full of illuminating and original insights, bringing aspects of the Brontës’ lives into sharp focus for the first time.”
—Mark Bostridge, Literary Review (UK)
“A passionate, intelligent and stylish book. Deborah Lutz works a kind of magic around the Brontës’ possessions and evokes their lives, works and legacies more vividly than ever. A brilliantly original study that all Brontë lovers will want to read.”
—Claire Harman, author of Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart
“The most mundane object carries a lifetime of experience within it. Daily life, and the objects of daily living, can speak to us, if we are willing to listen. Deborah Lutz has listened to what the Brontës’ possessions tell us, and produced an original, enlightening and acute reading of these original, enlightening and acute women’s writings.”
—Judith Flanders, author of The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London
“Deborah Lutz’s engaging new study . . . allows us to feel the texture of the Brontës’ experience. . . . She pulls off the hardest trick in literary biography: to make us feel that we know the subjects intimately, and, simultaneously, to make the familiar strange.”
—Lucasta Miller, Guardian
“What an impressive web of detail, housed within compact and elegant sentences! This jeweled book—an act of intricate divination—brings the Brontës to life by performing a magical investigation of the objects surrounding them. Deborah Lutz exercises a dowser’s wondrous rigor; with erudition, deep feeling, and an almost mystical sense of an inanimate object’s communicativeness, she pioneers a new way of looking at detritus and keepsakes, and a new way of writing biography.”
—Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s & Other Essays
“Fresh and novel. . . . Reading this sensitive inquiry into the Brontës’ objects, and the family members who were so very close to them, allows the many who love the sisters’ writings to partake, even if from afar, in the special lives of these fascinating and brilliant women. It’s literary archeology par excellence.”
—Tom Lavoie, Shelf Awareness
“A fascinating book on treating our most treasured objects with care and loving attention. . . . Fans of the fiction of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne will love this imaginative book which provides access to their lives and creations through nine objects. . . . In a time when our technological toys are taking us away from the material world, we need to reverse that trend and reverence our things.”
—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
“Lutz takes a new approach at looking at the Brontë sisters . . . and creates a new and fresh view of this creative family. A must read for any fan of the Brontë sisters.”
—Grand Forks Herald
Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Lutz
All rights reserved
First Edition
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Book design by Brooke Koven
Production managers: Louise Mattarelliano
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Lutz, Deborah.
The Brontë cabinet : three lives in nine objects / Deborah Lutz. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-393-24008-5 (hardcover)
1. Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855. 2. Brontë, Emily, 1818-1848. 3. Brontë, Anne, 1820-1849. 4. Women authors, English—19th century—Biography. 5. Sisters—England—Yorkshire—Biography. I. Title.
PR4168.L88 2015
823'.809—dc23
[B]
2014046935
ISBN 978-0-393-24673-5 (e-book)
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