Surbiton author Sharon Wright, pictured, has excited the literary world with a biography unearthing a Regency tale of passion: The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick.
“There’s been huge interest from Brontë fans and scholars,” said Sharon, of Cleaveland Road, after Pen & Sword published the book about Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë’s mum.
For two centuries, Maria Branwell, wife of the Irish-born author and Anglican priest Patrick Brontë, has been little more than a shadowy footnote.
“Yet without this elegant, resourceful woman there would be no Jane Eyre or Mr Rochester, no Cathy, no Heathcliff,” said Sharon, a former Daily Express columnist who also had publishing success with a book on female ballooning pioneers.
It is much harder to research the life of an 18th century woman than a man (“The only reason I’ve been able to is because she was from a wealthy family and married a famous man”), but Sharon has put in the miles, traipsing back and forth across Britain, piecing together details of Maria’s whirlwind romance with Patrick, and the subsequent births of three of the most gifted literary siblings ever seen.
“Researching Maria has been fun, but also quite a slog,” she said. “I went to Penzance, where she was born, I’ve studied her love letters and basically joined the dots. She was remarkable; educated, feisty and passionate, and [Patrick] was smitten!”