Winifred Gérin : biographer of the Brontës / Helen MacEwan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

MacEwan, Helen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gérin, Winifred.

Women biographers--Great Britain--Biography.

Women biographers.

Brontë family.

Biography as a literary form.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiv, 250 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Brighton ; Chicago : Sussex Academic Press, 2016.

Summary:

"The biographer Winifred Gérin (1901-81), who wrote the lives of all four Brontë siblings, stumbled on her literary vocation on a visit to Haworth, after a difficult decade following the death of her first husband. On the same visit she met her second husband, a Brontë enthusiast twenty years her junior. Together they turned their backs on London to live within sight of the Parsonage, Gérin believing that full understanding of the Brontës required total immersion in their environment. Gérin's childhood and youth, like the Brontës, was characterised by a cultured home and an intense imaginative life shared with her sister and two brothers, and by family tragedies (the loss of two siblings in early life). Strong cultural influences formed the children's imagination: polyglot parents, French history, the Crystal Palace, Old Vic productions. Winifred's years at Newnham College, Cambridge were enlivened by such eccentric characters as the legendary lecturer Arthur Quiller-Couch ('Q'), Lytton Strachey's sister Pernel, and Bloomsbury's favourite philosopher, G.E. Moore. Her happy life in Paris with her Belgian cellist husband, Eugène Gérin, was brought to an abrupt end by the Second World War, during which the couple had many adventures: fleeing occupied Belgium, saving Jews in Vichy France, and escaping through Spain and Portugal to England, where they did secret war work for the Political Intelligence Department near Bletchley Park. After Eugène's death in 1945 Winifred coped with bereavement by writing poetry and plays until discovering her true literary metier on her visit to Haworth"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Norwood: Childhood and the End of Childhood 1

2 Paris 1913: 'The most splendid adventure' 22

3 Sydenham: The Great War Years 28

4 Cambridge: 'Bill' and 'Q' 37

5 Holidays in France: 'Plom' and Cannes 54

6 Paris Idyll: 1932-1939 75

7 Flight from Brussels: The Summer of 1940 91

8 Nice: The Pit of Darkness 98

9 Aspley Guise: Political Intelligence 109

10 West Cromwell Road: The Long Road Back 129

11 Haworth: 'Bronte Atmosphere' 159

12 Haworth: Recognition at Last 182

13 Kensington: The Final Fifteen Years 202.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781845197438

1845197437

OCLC:

920672109