Patrick Brontë

Patrick Brontë (1777–1861) was the father of the famous "Brontë Sisters"—Anne, Charlotte, and Emily—three of Victorian England's greatest novelists, but he was also a fascinating man in his own right, and not nearly as unsympathetic a character as Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë would have us believe. Born into poverty in Ireland, he won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained into the Church of England. He was perpetual curate of Haworth in Yorkshire for 41