Who Needs Game of Thrones? Enter Glass Town, Gondal, and Angria:
Authorsâ juvenilia often allows readers to see the early inclinations and nascent style of a person who would grow up to become a famous literary figure. For the BrontĂ« siblings, the juvenilia is a fascinating fantasy world in its own right.
As children, eldest of the four creative BrontĂ«s, Charlotte â born on this day, 21 April 1816 â and next youngest, brother Branwell, worked from around 1824/5 using toy soldiers Branwell had been given by their father as characters for their fantasy realm. Around these figures, Charlotte, Branwell, and the youngest two children, Emily and Anne, created first the city of Glass Town; after the first few years (around 1829), Charlotte and Branwell expanded to write about the wider kingdom of Angria while Emily and Anne worked on the separate kingdom of Gondal.Â
Many of the documents making up the Glass Town/Gondal/Angria corpus â written well into all four authorâs young adulthoods (through 1839, if not later â Emily continued throughout her life) â were written and bound in miniature [as seen above in the items above, from the British Library]. Not only narrative prose, the juvenilia comprises poems from the points of view of various characters like âWel[l]ingtonâ and Napoleon, Parry and Ross (after the explorers) and the completely fictional Augusta Geraldin Almeda (âA.G.Aâ) and the Duke of Zamorna. Other entries include descriptions of events and adventures, and individual magazines and drawings of, about, and âbyâ Glass Town/Gondal/Angria residents and sites. Many of the best-known BrontĂ« poems were originally composed as part of the juvenilia works, only to have specific references (names and places) removed before publication in the poetical works: e.g., Emilyâs five excerpts from her 50 Gondal poems.
In 2010, scholar Christine Alexander edited the selected Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal for OUP â if you want to read the whole strange, wonderful stories alongside Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Tenant!
[Images of (1) âVesperâ and âMatinâ poems;  (2) âThe Search After Hap[p]inessâ; (3) Blackwoodâs Young Menâs Magazine; (4) Tales; (5) âThe History of the Young Menâ; and (6) Earliest known writings of Charlotte BrontĂ« (not part of the speculative fiction of these worlds) â via British Library, © BrontĂ« Parsonage Museum]
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