To
celebrate the Brontë bicentenaries, Helen MacEwan has written a new book
exploring the life of one of their most important biographers. On 21 November
at Waterstones Piccadilly, she will be launching Winifred Gérin, biographer
of the Brontës (publication date 15 November).
Having
written about the Brontës in Brussels, Helen first became interested in Gérin’s
life story because of her Belgian links and her special interest in Charlotte
Brontë’s Brussels period.
Winifred Gérin (1901-81) is known as the biographer
who moved to Haworth to write the lives of all four Brontë siblings, literally
treading in their footsteps as she researched them. But her ten years in
Haworth were just part of a romantic, eventful and sometimes tragic life.
Marriage to a Belgian cellist, Eugène Gérin, took
her to Paris and then, in 1939, to Brussels where the couple worked for the
British Embassy. Following the German invasion of 1940 they had various
hair-raising adventures in France, finally escaping to Britain where they
worked for Political Intelligence. After Eugène Gérin’s death in 1945, Winifred
sought consolation in writing poetry and plays until discovering both her
literary vocation and second love on a fateful first visit to Haworth.
Gérin went on to write biographies of Elizabeth
Gaskell, Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Horatia Nelson. She also wrote plays about
Jane Austen, Fanny Burney and Charlotte Brontë. This book is based on her
letters and her unpublished memoir.
Waterstones Piccadilly, 203-206 Piccadilly,
W1J 9HD
Saturday 21
November, 2 pm
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