Charlotte Bronte Biography Part I

 Charlotte was the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who wrote… and in many ways a dominant figure in the family. She was born in Yorkshire in 1816, to Patrick Bronte an Irish man and Maria Branwell, who was from Cornwall. In her early childhood her mother died - by then Patrick had moved to Haworth, in Yorkshire where he was perpetual curate.

She with her sisters went to a school where the girls were ill treated and half starved, and her older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died. Patrick brought her and Emily home, and she helped to teach her younger sisters.

In 1831 she went to school again, to Miss Wooler's school where she was quite happy, and she studied hard, needing to educate herself so that she could become a governess. She made 2 good friends at the school, Ellen Nussey who was a quiet conventional ladylike girl and Mary Taylor who was a much more interesting radical minded girl who was later to go to New Zealand. Charlotte was the only Bronte girl to make any friends at school.  Anne rarely made friends outside the family and Emily positively refused to socialise with anyone but her sisters.

After completing her education Charlotte took a job as a teacher at Miss Woolers’s school, but she didn’t enjoy being a teacher. Her passion was for writing and she missed her home at Haworth

Lady Gregory part I

 Augusta Gregory was a key figure in Irish cultural nationalism and the development of the Abbey Theatre in Ireland.

She was a member of the Anglo Irish upper class but she turned against her background and turned to supporting the Nationalist movement of the early 20^th century, which led to independence.  

She was born Isabella Augusta Persse in in 1852 in Galway and was brought up there in an aristocratic family.  Her childhood nanny was an Irish Catholic who taught her about Irish history and folklore.  She had a good home education… and was an intelligent girl.  She married comparatively late, at the age of 28 .   Her husband  Sir William Gregory was much older than her, but he was a well educated man who had been Governor of Ceylon, and had also been a member of Parliament.  He was interested in writing also and they had interests in common. He had a house in London and the couple enjoyed living there and playing host to many literary figures. They also had an estate in Ireland, Coole Park in Galway and they travelled abroad frequently.

They had one son, Robert who later became a pilot in World War I.

Augusta was fond of her husband and was no doubt glad to have found a man who shared her intellectual interests.  However he was much older than her and during her travels abroad she had an affair with the poet Wilfred Blunt….She wrote love poems to him, and began to take an interest in nationalist movements.   She kept a journal and began to hone her writing skills.  Wilfred Blunt was a supporter of Arab nationalism..

However Augusta was still like most of her class against the idea of Irish independence and wrote a pamphlet against Home Rule… in the early 1880s. 

Jane Seymour final Part

 Jane became betrothed to Henry the day after Anne’s execution and married him 10 days later.  Her time as queen was limited.  She seems to have been concerned largely to lead a different sort of life to Anne, and to show that she was not similar to Henry’s turbulent second wife.  She dressed well but many considered her plain.  

She was strict with her ladies in waiting and her court was entirely free of scandal.  There was an end to gaiety in the queen’s chamber, of the king that happened under Anne.

She was an obedient wife to Henry and rarely challenged him.  Her brothers were interested in the Protestant religion but she remained a conventional Catholic and was unhappy with some of Henry’s policies about getting rid of the monasteries.. but she did not protest too much.  

She also tried to persuade Henry to reconcile with his daughter Mary.. who finally came to court and agreed that her mother’s marriage to Henry had not been legitimate and that she was not legitimate.  

Jane became pregnant and Henry was delighted that he finally would have a son born in an unquestionably legal marriage.. and he was sure this child would be a boy. Jane however did give birth to a son but she died a few days later possibly from childbirth fever.

Her life and reign as queen had been short and she still come across as a shadowy figure, who seems to have had little in the way of opinions or personality, unlike most of Henry's queens..  However having given Henry a son she was his favourite wife and he chose to be buried next to her…

Parke Godwin Arthurian writer

 Parke Godwin was an American writer, who was one of the first to write about Arthurian themes. He was born in New York city in 1929 and was the grandson of a well known journalist. He worked in several jobs including acting and working in advertising.  But he wanted to write and was a prolific writer of Science Fiction.

In 1980 he published his first Arthurian novel Firelord, which is a realistic re telling of the Arthur story.  He was knowledgeable about Dark Ages history and portrayed Arthur as a fighting soldier and an active ruler. After Firelord he wrote a second novel about Guenevere, set in the Saxon England  that came after Arthur’s defeat and death.  Guenevere becomes a servant in a Saxon household and learns more about ordinary people. In Firelord Morgana who is usually portrayed as an evil character and Arthur’s half sister, is a more sympathetic person, who is Arthur’s first wife and a leader of the wild “faery” Prydn people… who lead a nomadic life.  Guenevere is from an aristocratic background and cannot understand Morgana…. he also works the Tristan and Isolde story into the book and gives a sympathetic slant on Guenevere’s affair with Lancelot….

In the 1990s, he wrote novels about Robin Hood, again setting it in a realistic mediaeval England.

Godwin died in 2103…in California….

Jane Seymour Part II

 Its  hard to get a picture of Jane’s personality.  There are no letters from Henry to her, and her reign as queen was very short.  She caused no scandals, and died when her child was a newborn..

She seem to have engaged willingly in a flirtation with Henry, which infuriated Anne Boleyn.

Anne was afraid that having lost her baby in January, Henry was angry with her for failing to provide a male heir.  Katherine had died in January so if he were to end his marriage to Anne, people would not say that he had to return to Katherine…

There are stories of Anne berating Jane for accepting a present from Henry of a locket.. but Henry is supposed to have told his angry wife that she should shut her eyes to his other relationships as Katherine had done.

Anne herself was behaving eccentrically in the months after her miscarriage… She flirted with the young men of her circle, encouraging them to declare their love for her…  which with her marriage to Henry under strain was playing with fire.

There was a convention of “courtly love” where young men professed admiration for the queen, but Anne was not a royal like Katherine had been and she did not seem to be able to keep the playing and flirting at a reasonable conventional level.  She encouraged it and then became frightened.  She found that young Mark Smeaton, one of her musicians, was also “sighing for love of her” and told him that she could not speak to him as she did to the other young men who were gentlemen…because he was of an inferior station. But her conduct did give a wrong impression.  

When Anne was arrested and charged with adultery, Jane may have believed that it was true and pursued her own romance with Henry…