1 Branwell Brontë, Letters from an Englishman, 1830-32

The Brontë family manuscripts in the Brotherton Collection have a strong focus on Branwell Brontë. The collection includes letters, poems and sketches created by Branwell as an adult, but the manuscripts written when he was a child are particularly interesting.

This tiny newspaper is part of a much larger set painstakingly created by the Brontë siblings. Other such newspapers can be found in museums across the world. They tell stories of an imaginary country, Angria, which the children created together in the nursery at Haworth.

In contrast with their quite limited lives, their landscape is populated with incredibly scandalous individuals: affairs and murders were very common in this secret world. Many of these characters can be seen as a prototype for some of the key protagonists in the novels of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.