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Thursday 20 September 2012

Removing the shroud of mystery


Professor Maddalena De Leo’s Italian novel Mai più in oscurità is now available in English. Its title is Removing the shroud of mystery and can be easily found and bought on the site: www.lulu.com by typing the name of its author or the title of the book in the space on the right of the page.

The novel is about Maria Branwell’s life and marks the 200th anniversary of the Brontë parents’ wedding (1812-2012).  Professor De Leo says in her Preface:
   
The early death of the Brontës’ mother and her birth in Cornwall, a land rich in myths and Celtic legends has always fascinated me. As a long time Brontë scholar, I recently visited Cornwall and Penzance, the towns where she was born and lived as a girl. Staying in this fabled land opened up to me a wealth of information, curiosities, doubts and speculations on a character still enshrouded in mystery.

My resources information and my own imagination enabled me to render a true portrait of Maria Branwell’s early life. Beginning with the first biographical episode dating from, I pieced together a biographical sketch starting from February 1850. This was when Charlotte Brontë was given by her father a small parcel of letters addressed to him by his future wife Maria during their engagement.I thought that maybe Charlotte Brontë conceived the ideas for her juvenile literature through this. In the diary Maria might have recorded the most significant episodes of her life so as to leave something of herself to posterity.

In the appendix I have included the unabridged text of the authentic letters by Maria Branwell not published since 1914 when they appeared in Clement Shorter’s book. Through this work I hope I put this precious jewel in its rightful place in the Brontë mosaic.

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Maddalena De Leo
Removing the shroud of mystery
pp.128
ISBN 978-1-291-05861-1


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