Description
Book Synopsis In Gondal’s Queen, Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford presents a cycle of eighty-four poems by Emily Jane Brontë, for the first time arranged in logical sequence, to re-create the “novel in verse” which Emily wrote about their beloved mystical kingdom of Gondal and its ruler, Augusta Geraldine Almeda, who brought tragedy to those who loved her.
Thanks to previous publications by Ratchford, the imaginative world of Gondal is well known not only to Brontë scholars but also to general readers. Only in the present book, however, with Emily’s lovely poems restored to the setting which gave them being, can the full impact of this extraordinary literary creation be realized.
The life story of Gondal’s Queen, from portentous birth to tragic death, is set in a world compounded of dark Gothic romance and Byronic extravagance; yet out of it emerges not only a real country of wild moor sheep and piercingly beautiful nights but also the por
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Argument
- Dramatis Personae
- Geographical Background
- Chapter I: The Birth of a Princess
- Chapter II: Love Dawns
- Chapter III: Alexander, Lord of Elbë
- Chapter IV: The Lady of Aspin Castle
- Chapter V: Julius Again
- Chapter VI: Conquest
- Chapter VII: Revenge
- Chapter VIII: Crumbling of an Empire
- Chapter IX: The Fugitive
- Chapter X: Fifteen Wild Decembers
- Chapter XI: Fernando De Samara
- Chapter XII: The Death of a Queen
- Appendix I: Emily Brontë’s Poems Pertaining to the Republican-Royalist War in Gondal
- Appendix II: Emily and Anne Brontë’s Prose Notes
- Index of First Lines
- General Index
