COVE

In June of 1826, Reverend Patrick Brontë returned home from the city of Leeds with twelve toy soldiers for his son, Branwell.  These soldiers quickly sparked the imaginations of Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and the siblings began crafting fantastical stories around these figures that would carry through into their writing as adults. The toy soldiers provided a gateway into the worlds of Angria and Gondol and the capital city of Glass Town. The children came up with rich narratives of love, war, tragedy, greed, and betrayal, developing the stories through poetry and prose as they grew up. These worlds and characters then went on to inform the writing of the three Brontë sisters, evident in their portrayal of male characters and their constructions of romantic relationships. The influence of these fictional worlds reaches far beyond the Brontës' own writing, inspiring other authors to write their own interpretations of these stories, such as Pauline Clarke's The Return of the Twelves (1962) and Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town (2020). These imaginary worlds were instrumental in shaping the Brontë sisters' writing and in how we perceive their works today.

Replicas of Antique Nineteenth-Century Toy Soldiers, Wikipedia. When Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë were young, their father, Reverend Patrick Brontë, returned home from Leeds with twelve toy soldiers for Branwell,  which served as the entry into their imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondol. The children grew immediately attached to the soldiers, aligning them with real-life figures they idolized (e.g., The Duke of Wellington and Napoleon) as well as making up entirely new characters (Anne's "Waiting Boy," who was constantly daydreaming and stuck in his head). The children imagined these soldiers to be from far flung reaches of the world or even from other worlds entirely. This imagination of other worlds was their first foray into what would eventually become the fantastical world of Angria, and the majestic city of Glass Town. Since these toy soldiers pictured represent the British Coldstream Guards during the Crimean War, they are a likely model to represent the actual toy soldiers that sparked the imaginations of the Brontës. 

Late Eighteenth-Century British Uniform, photographer Matthew Bisanz, 2009, Wikipedia. In the world of Angria, the toy soldiers took on lives and personalities of their own. Led by Branwell's desire for glory and conquest, the soldiers conquered the kingdom of Ashantee, a fictional world of people with darker skin. The redcoat uniform represents both the British army in the real world as well as the toy soldiers in the fictional world. The colonial narrative within the world of Angria parallels the real-world colonization of Africa at the hands of the British Empire. In this way, as well as others, the Brontës were inspired by real events happening in the world when creating their own fictional stories. This image captures one of the redcoat uniforms worn by the British during the American Revolution, a few decades before the Brontë children would be gifted their own toy soldiers.

Map of the Glass Town Federation and surrounding lands, Branwell Brontë, 1830-1831, Wikipedia. The map of the Glass Town Federation bridges the gap between material objects such as the toy soldiers and British uniform and more abstract concepts featured in this case, the Byronic male and sexual triangle, which exist only within the pages of the Brontës' works. This map depicts the area that Branwell's yearning for military might and conquest led the soldiers to explore and take over. It is clear that the empire of Glass Town spanned across great distances, even going so far as to stretch across bodies of water, much like the British Empire at the time of the Brontës. Within these vast lands existed many different types of characters and relationships, examined in the next few objects of this case.

Fritz Eichenberg, "Jane's First Meeting with Mr. Rochester," Jane Eyre (1847), by Charlotte Brontë, 1943 Random House Edition, from the personal collection of Catherine Golden. All three Brontë sisters clearly took elements from their stories of Glass Town and put them to use in their later published novels. One of the more obvious examples of this occurs with the trope of the Byronic male, a figure who was dark, brooding, mysterious, angry, and often somewhat threatening. In Angria, this trope is realized through the character of Arthur Wellesley, or Zamorna, a mysterious poet who manipulates the people around him, including his wife, for his own personal gain. Variations of Zamorna appear throughout all three sisters' works in the characters of Charlotte's Mr. Rochester, Emily's Heathcliff, and Anne's Arthur Huntingdon. This illustration by Fritz Eichenberg for the 1943 edition of Jane Eyre shows Mr. Rochester as he is introduced in the narrative: a dark and threatening figure who approaches Jane on a lonesome road in the dark of night. While there are some key differences between the Brontës' later characters and the initial figure of Zamorna, traces of their original narratives with Angria and Gondol clearly influence all of their novels.

Manuscript page from Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, 2019 Norton Critical Edition, p. 39, from the personal collection of Kari Stein. Another clear example of Angria and Gondol in the Brontës' later works is the omnipresent sexual triangle. All three sisters make use of the sexual triangle multiple times, whether it be the conflict between Jane, Rochester, and St. John in Charlotte's Jane Eyre; Helen, Gilbert, and Arthur in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; or Catherine, Heathcliff, and Edgar Linton in Emily's Wuthering Heights, here pictured. Sexual triangles are practically inescapable in Victorian literature, and the Brontë sisters are certainly no exception. Each of them make use of the sexual triangle to provide obstacles for their main pairing, often utilizing more than one triangle in each novel. However, their use of the sexual triangle started long before their published works, as can be seen in their stories of Glass Town. The dynamics between Zamorna, Mary Percy, and Zenobia, as well as Mary Percy, Quashia Quamina, and Zamorna are perfect examples of the sexual triangle put to use in the Brontës' early imaginings.

Book Covers of Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës (2020), by Isabel Greenberg, and The Return of the Twelves (1962) by Pauline Clarke, personal collection of Catherine Golden. These two books, among many others, show the lasting impact the toy soldiers and the worlds of Angria and Gondol have on literature. Glass Town is a graphic novel telling the story of Angria and Gondol, as well as the Brontës' lives, through the eyes of Charlotte Brontë and one of Glass Town's main cast, Charles Wellesley. Meanwhile, The Return of the Twelves tells the story of a young boy named Max who finds the original twelve toy soldiers in the attic of the house he and his family have recently moved into and discovers that they are alive and capable of recounting their own stories. While we are familiar with the ways in which the Brontës' more famous works are still relevant in today's day and age, it is important to acknowledge that even their childhood musings still carry weight and influence today and inspire other creative endeavors.