Bookathon - B

 B is for The Baby-Sitters Club. Never heard of them? Where have you been?

Well actually Dear Reader, I have been to the bookshop and because all books begin with the letter B surely I can pick anything I like. Oh alright. Let's go with one of the essentials of the literary canon, the Bronte sisters. Minus their alcoholic brother, Branwell. He didn't write anything as he was too drunk to string together coherent sentences.

The Bronte sisters lived in the desolate moors of Yorkshire in the 19th century and were Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their father was a vicar and they were poor as church mice. However they were as enterprising as they were bored and made up stories and poems of their own, which they would attempt to self-publish without much success. When they were young they made up an imaginary place called 'Angria' peopled with Angrians in their juvenilia. Because it was so hard to get published as women, they chose pen-names which were pretty disastrous like Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. I know. What men do you know with names like those? 

However it was Emily who was the poet who got published first, before dramatically dying of TB. Her only novel was Wuthering Heights. It's about Cathy and Heathcliff and ghosts and passion, and is every bit as thrilling as you expect the wild moors of Yorkshire to be when you meet the love of your life after living in isolation for so long. They don't tell their own story though, it's related through the gossiping housekeeper, because at the end they *spoiler* die. But never fear, it's fiction so they can always come back as ghosts.

Charlotte, the older sister, was a lot more prolific, or possibly it's just because she lived longer, and wrote several novels with poor church mice protagonists, her most famous being Jane Eyre who was orphaned as well. Parents tended to die young in those days, their own mother had long succumbed to the dampness of the moors. I don't need to tell you the sypnosis of Jane Eyre because any self-respecting reader would have read this classic, if not seen the movie starring Anna Paquin, and known about the *spoiler* first wife hidden in the attic. 

That leaves Anne, often overlooked, but actually I liked her the most. She was real and wrote Agnes Grey which was about the lot of poor governesses which is not unlike the lot of poor teachers who teach wealthy spoiled children in private schools. I don't need to tell you that that arrangement can only end badly. She doesn't end up marrying her boss unlike Jane Eyre, who's famous line 'Reader, I married him' has you almost throwing the book away in despair. However this is compensated by Mr Rochester's dog, and the ashes of his first wife, and the fact that he is blind and can't see. He needs Jane Eyre just as much as she needs a place to live that's warm and dry.

Yes unfortunately all three sisters died young of TB that came from living in the uninsulated wet, wild, Yorkshire moors but they did briefly make ends meet by writing these awesome books that are still being read by readers today that know how to look after books properly.