Gondal (fictional country)
Encyclopedia
Gondal is an imaginary world or paracosm
created by Emily Brontë
and Anne Brontë
in their youth. Gondal is an island in the South Pacific
, just north of the island Gaaldine. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum
in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of speculative fiction
.
and Anne
. It was a game which they may possibly have played to the end of their lives. Early on they had played with their older siblings Charlotte
and Branwell
in the imaginary country and game of Angria, which featured the Duke of Wellington
and his sons as the heroes.
As in the case of Angria, Gondal has its origins in the Glasstown Confederacy, an earlier imaginary setting created by the siblings as children. Glasstown was founded when twelve wooden soldiers were offered to Branwell Brontë by his father, Patrick Brontë, on June 5, 1826. The soldiers became characters in their imaginary world. Charlotte wrote:
However, it was only during December 1827 that the world really took shape, when Charlotte suggested that everyone own and manage their own island, which they named after heroic leaders: Charlotte had Wellington, Branwell had Sneaky, Emily had Parry, and Anne had Ross. Each island capital's was called Glasstown, hence the name of the Glasstown Confederacy.
Emily and Anne, as the youngest siblings, were often relegated to inferior positions within the game. Therefore, they staged a rebellion and established the imaginary world of Gondal for themselves. "The Gondal Chronicles," which would have given us the full story of Gondal, has unfortunately been lost, but the poems and the diary entries they wrote to each other provide something of an outline. The earliest documented reference to Gondal is one of Emily's diary entries in 1834, 9 years after the Glasstown Confederacy, when the two younger sisters were aged 16 and 14 respectively; it read: "The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine."
All of the prose chronicles are now lost. The only surviving remnants of the Gondal works are made up of poems, diary entries and some occasional memory aids such as lists of names and characteristics.
). The southern island, Gaaldine, features a more tropical climate. Gaaldine is subject to Gondal, which may be related to the time period of the early nineteenth-century in which Britain was expanding its Empire.
The character stories created by the Bronte children are filled with melodrama and intrigue. The early part of Gondal's history follows the life of the warlike Julius Brenzaida, a figure reminiscent of the Duke of Zamorna from the siblings' earlier Tales of Angria and Prince of Gondal's primary kingdom of Angora. The two loves of his life are Rosina, who becomes his wife and queen, and Geraldine Sidonia, who gives birth to his daughter, Augusta Geraldin Almeda (A.G.A). Julius is evidently a two-faced king. After sharing a coronation with Gerald, King of Exina, he imprisons and executes him. Julius is eventually assassinated during a civil war and is succeeded by his daughter, A.G.A., who is similar to her father in temperament. She has several lovers, including Alexander of Elbë, Fernando De Samara, and Alfred Sidonia of Aspin Castle, all of whom die. She also is eventually murdered during a civil war.
Anne Brontë used characters that her sister Emily did not. However, these are all lost now and are unlikely to be recovered.
The poems were very personal to Emily; when Charlotte once discovered them by mistake she was furious. Like Byron, she saw poetry as more of a process than a product.
Emily most of the time destroyed her notes after transcribing the poems into fair-copy manuscript, and where draft versions survive they only have minor differences. The only draft with major differences that survives is from the Gondal poems: "Why ask to know the date—the clime".
The first to attempt to reconstruct the Gondal material was Fanny Ratchford in 1945. She is accused of confusing the issue by assuming that three characters were intended to be the same individual: Rosina, AGA and Geraldine Sidonia. William Doremus Paden, in An Investigation of Gondal (1958), created a detailed chronology of Gondal. The most convincing description of the setting is believed to be The Brontës (1945) by Laura Hinkley; this is used in the introduction of The Complete Poems (1951) by Philip Henderson, a Folio Society
publication of Emily Brontë's poetry.
The Angria and Gondal works can be seen as early forms of both science fiction and fan fiction. Andy Sawyer, Director of Science Fiction Studies MA at the University of Liverpool: "The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary ‘universes’ of Star Trek or Harry Potter. While the sense of fantasy is strong, there are teasing examples of what might be called the beginnings of science fiction."
Paracosm
A paracosm is a detailed imaginary world involving humans and/or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. Often having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time: months or even years.The...
created by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
and Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a...
in their youth. Gondal is an island in the South Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
, just north of the island Gaaldine. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
.
Invention
The world of Gondal was invented as a joint venture by sisters EmilyEmily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
and Anne
Anne Brontë
Anne Brontë was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a...
. It was a game which they may possibly have played to the end of their lives. Early on they had played with their older siblings Charlotte
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
and Branwell
Branwell Brontë
Patrick Branwell Brontë was a painter and poet, the only son of the Brontë family, and the brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.-Youth:...
in the imaginary country and game of Angria, which featured the Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
and his sons as the heroes.
As in the case of Angria, Gondal has its origins in the Glasstown Confederacy, an earlier imaginary setting created by the siblings as children. Glasstown was founded when twelve wooden soldiers were offered to Branwell Brontë by his father, Patrick Brontë, on June 5, 1826. The soldiers became characters in their imaginary world. Charlotte wrote:
However, it was only during December 1827 that the world really took shape, when Charlotte suggested that everyone own and manage their own island, which they named after heroic leaders: Charlotte had Wellington, Branwell had Sneaky, Emily had Parry, and Anne had Ross. Each island capital's was called Glasstown, hence the name of the Glasstown Confederacy.
Emily and Anne, as the youngest siblings, were often relegated to inferior positions within the game. Therefore, they staged a rebellion and established the imaginary world of Gondal for themselves. "The Gondal Chronicles," which would have given us the full story of Gondal, has unfortunately been lost, but the poems and the diary entries they wrote to each other provide something of an outline. The earliest documented reference to Gondal is one of Emily's diary entries in 1834, 9 years after the Glasstown Confederacy, when the two younger sisters were aged 16 and 14 respectively; it read: "The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine."
All of the prose chronicles are now lost. The only surviving remnants of the Gondal works are made up of poems, diary entries and some occasional memory aids such as lists of names and characteristics.
World and Characters
The Gondal saga is set on two islands in the South Pacific. The northern island, Gondal, is a realm of moorlands and snow (based on YorkshireYorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
). The southern island, Gaaldine, features a more tropical climate. Gaaldine is subject to Gondal, which may be related to the time period of the early nineteenth-century in which Britain was expanding its Empire.
The character stories created by the Bronte children are filled with melodrama and intrigue. The early part of Gondal's history follows the life of the warlike Julius Brenzaida, a figure reminiscent of the Duke of Zamorna from the siblings' earlier Tales of Angria and Prince of Gondal's primary kingdom of Angora. The two loves of his life are Rosina, who becomes his wife and queen, and Geraldine Sidonia, who gives birth to his daughter, Augusta Geraldin Almeda (A.G.A). Julius is evidently a two-faced king. After sharing a coronation with Gerald, King of Exina, he imprisons and executes him. Julius is eventually assassinated during a civil war and is succeeded by his daughter, A.G.A., who is similar to her father in temperament. She has several lovers, including Alexander of Elbë, Fernando De Samara, and Alfred Sidonia of Aspin Castle, all of whom die. She also is eventually murdered during a civil war.
Anne Brontë used characters that her sister Emily did not. However, these are all lost now and are unlikely to be recovered.
Interpretation
Several of Emily's poems that had been assumed in early scholarship to be allegories for personal experiences were eventually revealed to be episodes in the Gondal saga.The poems were very personal to Emily; when Charlotte once discovered them by mistake she was furious. Like Byron, she saw poetry as more of a process than a product.
Emily most of the time destroyed her notes after transcribing the poems into fair-copy manuscript, and where draft versions survive they only have minor differences. The only draft with major differences that survives is from the Gondal poems: "Why ask to know the date—the clime".
The first to attempt to reconstruct the Gondal material was Fanny Ratchford in 1945. She is accused of confusing the issue by assuming that three characters were intended to be the same individual: Rosina, AGA and Geraldine Sidonia. William Doremus Paden, in An Investigation of Gondal (1958), created a detailed chronology of Gondal. The most convincing description of the setting is believed to be The Brontës (1945) by Laura Hinkley; this is used in the introduction of The Complete Poems (1951) by Philip Henderson, a Folio Society
Folio Society
The Folio Society is a book club based in London that produces new editions of classic books. Their books are notable for their high quality bindings and original illustrations...
publication of Emily Brontë's poetry.
The Angria and Gondal works can be seen as early forms of both science fiction and fan fiction. Andy Sawyer, Director of Science Fiction Studies MA at the University of Liverpool: "The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary ‘universes’ of Star Trek or Harry Potter. While the sense of fantasy is strong, there are teasing examples of what might be called the beginnings of science fiction."
Poems
In February 1844, Emily Brontë copied her poems into two notebooks, one containing Gondal poetry and one containing non-Gondal poetry. The non-Gondal notebook was discovered in 1926 by Mr. Davidson Cook and reproduced in the Shakespeare Head edition of Emily's poems. The notebook of Gondal poems was presented to the British Museum in 1933 by the descendants of Mr. George Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co., Charlotte Brontë's publisher. It was published in full in 1938.| # | Fictional correspondant(s) | Title | First line | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A.G.A. | "There shines the moon, at noon of night" | March 6, 1837 | ||
| 2 | A.G.A. to A.E. | "Lord of Elbë, on Elbë Hill" | August 19, 1837 | ||
| 3 | A.G.A. to A.S. | "At such a time, in such a spot" | May 6, 1840 (alt. July 28, 1843) | ||
| 4 | To A.G.A. | "'Thou standest in the green-wood now'" | |||
| 5 | A.G.A. to A.S. | "This summer wind, with thee and me" | March 2, 1844 | ||
| 6 | A.G.A. to A.S. | "O wander not so far away!" | May 20, 1838 | ||
| 7 | A.G.A. | "To the bluebell" | May 9, 1839 | ||
| 8 | Written in Aspin Castle | "How do I love on summer nights" | August 20, 1842 (alt. February 6, 1843) | ||
| 9 | Douglas's Ride | "Well, narrower draw the circle round" | July 11, 1838 | ||
| 10 | By R. Gleneden | "From our evening fireside now" | April 17, 1839 | ||
| 11 | Gleneden's Dream | "Tell me, watcher, is it winter?" | May 21, 1838 | ||
| 12 | Rosina | "Weeks of wildest delirium past" | September 1, 1841 | ||
| 13 | Songs by Julius Brenzaida to G.S. | "Geraldine, the moon is shining" | October 17, 1838 | ||
| 14 | Songs by J. Brenzaida to G.S. | "I knew not twas so dire a crime" | October 17, 1838 | Prior to the discover of the manuscript with the complete set of poems, this was considered to be a personal love poem. | |
| 15 | Geraldine | "'Twas night, her comrades gathered all" | August 17, 1841 | ||
| 16 | A.G.A. | "For him who struck thy foreign string" | August 30, 1838 | ||
| 17 | F. de Samara, written in the Gaaldine prison caves to A.G.A. | "Thy sun is near meridian height" | January 6, 1840 | ||
| 18 | F. de Samara to A.G.A. | "Light up thy halls! 'tis closing day" | November 1, 1838 | This poem was also once considered personal. | |
| 19 | Written in returning to the P. of I. on the 10th of January 1827 | "The busy day has hurried by" | June 14, 1839 | ||
| 20 | On the fall of Zalona | "All blue and bright, in glorious light" | February 24, 1843 | ||
| 21 | A.G.A. | The Death of | "Were they shepherds, who sat all day" | January 1841 (alt. May 1844) | |
| 22 | A Farewell to Alexandria | "I've seen this dell in July's shine" | July 12, 1839 | ||
| 23 | E.W. to A.G.A. | "How few, of all the hearts that loved" | March 11, 1844 | ||
| 24 | "Come, walk with me" | ||||
| 25 | Date 18, E.G. to M.R. | "thy Guardians are asleep" | May 4, 1843 | ||
| 26 | To A.S. 1830 | "Where beams the sun the brightest" | May 1, 1843 | ||
| 27 | "In the earth, the earth though shalt be laid" | September 6, 1843 | |||
| 28 | A.S. to G.S. | "I do not weep, I would not weep" | December 19, 1841 | ||
| 29 | M.G. For the U.S. | "'Twas yesterday at early dawn" | December 19, 1843 | ||
| 30 | "'The linnet in the rocky dells'" [signed E.W.] | May 1, 1844 | |||
| 31 | J.B., Nov. 11th 1844 | From the Dungeon Wall in the Southern College - J.B. Sept, 1825 | "'Listen! when your hair like mine'" | ||
| 32 | Dec., 2nd, 1844. From a D.W. in the N.C. A.G.A. Sept, 1826 | "'Oh Day, He cannot die'" | |||
| 33 | D.G.C. to J.A. | "Come, the wind may never again" | October 2, 1844 | ||
| 34 | I.M. to I.G. | "'The winter wind is loud and wild" | November 6, 1844 | ||
| 35 | M. Douglas to E.R. Gleneden | "The moon is full this winter night" | November 21, 1844 | ||
| 36 | R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida | "Cold in the earth and the deep snow piled above thee!" | March 3, 1845 | ||
| 37 | H.A. and A.S. | "In the same place, when Nature wore" | May 17, 1842 | ||
| 38 | Rodric Lesley. 1830. | "Lie down and rest — the fight is done" | December 18, 1843 | ||
| 39 | "A thousand sounds of happiness" | April 22, 1845 | |||
| 40 | A.E. and R.C. | "Heavy hangs the raindrop" | May 28, 1845 | ||
| 41 | M.A. written on the Dungeon Wall - N.C. | "I know that tonight, the wind is sighing" [signed M.A.] | August 1845 | ||
| 42 | Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle | "Silent is the House — all are laid to sleep" | October 9, 1845 | ||
| 43 | " Why ask to know the date — the clime?" | September 14, 1846 | This poem (and the alternative version poem 44) were written after Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre... and are the only surviving writings from the last 2½ years of Emily's life. |
||
| 44 | "Why ask to know what date, what clime?" | May 13, 1847 [or 1848?] | A different version of poem 43 | ||
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