In Richard Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals, flighty Lydia Languish hears her aunt coming and orders her maid to “hide these books. Some of Chapone’s readers found her fusty and dull-but worthy. The book is based on a series of letters Chapone wrote to her fifteen-year-old niece, lecturing her on everything from how to study history (by reading Homer, Plutarch and “do not forget my darling Shakespeare”) to how to make and keep friends. So when I started writing Take Courage, my book about Anne Brontë, I knew I had to read it too. But we do know that the curriculum at Roe Head School, where all three sisters studied, and where Charlotte taught, was based on a 1773 conduct book by Hester Chapone called Letters on the Improvement of the Mind. Despite best efforts, no one really knows exactly what the Brontës read, and you can tie yourself in knots trying to find out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |