Charlotte Brontë, who dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital and richly-drawn characters, spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love. She eventually found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. After marrying, the pair honeymooned in Ireland – a glimmer of happiness in a life shadowed by tragedy.
We’re delighted to welcome Martina Devlin to discuss her enthralling new novel Charlotte . It weaves back and forth through Charlotte’s life, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her, those who thought they knew her, and those who longed to know her. Above all, this is a story of fiction: who creates it, who lives it, who owns it. Martina will be in conversation with Dr. Ailsa Grant Ferguson. The event will reflect on the writing and responsibilities of biographical fiction and consider Martina’s research and wider experience in writing about historical figures.
Brontë died just nine months into her marriage to Bell. Her genius, and the aura of mystery surrounding her, meant she’d been mythologised even within her own lifetime – a process which only intensified after her death. Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls – who encountered Charlotte on that fateful journey to Ireland, and who went on to wed her widower Arthur – Charlotte is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined. Bound by passion and obsession, friendship and loss, loyalty and deception – this a story of Brontë’s short but pivotal time in Ireland as never before told.
Martina Devlin
Martina Devlin is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist, having published ten books to date. Devlin has won numerous awards for both her writing and journalism, including the Hennessy Literary Award 1996, GALA columnist of the year 2010, National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year 2011 and Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett short story award 2012. She was also Writer-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in 2009. She has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book of the Year awards, and her non-fiction account of the Irish financial collapse, Banksters, co-authored with David Murphy, topped the best-seller list for eight weeks. A former Fleet Street journalist, she writes weekly current affairs columns for the Irish Independent and has been named National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year. She frequently chairs literary and current affairs events and is a regular commentator on BBC and RTÉ. She was born in Omagh and lives in Dublin.
Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson
Dr Grant Ferguson is Co-Director of the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories and leads the Performance and Communities Research and Enterprise Group. Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson’s research is interdisciplinary, focusing across early modern English literature and cultural history and their afterlives in 20th and 21st century contexts. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a current AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellow. Her work focuses on literary histories, especially Shakespeare in performance and cultural contexts, performance and gender, literary commemoration, heritage and cultural memory, and early modern women’s writing and its afterlives and mediation.
