The Brontës, My Mother and Me: Forgetful wanderings of love and loss

Let us be still and watch the weather come in over the wild expanses of Brontë country  

At its heart, this is a tender story of mother-daughter love and gentle compassion; reaching out to all who have been touched by grief and loss. The Brontës, My Mother and Me offers a unique lens to view the experience of caring for a loved one with memory loss at the end of life. It invites insight and fresh thinking for families, nurses, and carers, as well as for all who know and support bereaved children. Woven into the story is an empathic understanding of how the bereft Brontë children saw their world and why this matters today, making this book suitable for Brontë enthusiasts everywhere.

In her new book, Anna Biley walks the hills with Cathy and Heathcliff in Brontë country. Fending off forgetfulness and frailty; this tale of unbearable loss emerges from the labyrinth of memory and fragments of her mothers final-year diaries. And yet her book is so much more than a tribute to a mother, who is a representative of the resilient, northern women of the war generation. Biley is an astute and passionate reader of the Brontës. This is a coming-of-age story, about the shaking off of traditional female roles, as well as a lens for reading Jane Eyre as the voice of a grieving young girl.

Dr Sibylle Erle, FRSA, FHEA

Researcher (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies)

Visiting Senior Research Fellow (University of Bath, Centre for Death and Society)

Visiting Scholar (University of Lincoln)