Walking The Invisible: A literary guide through the walks and nature of the Brontë sisters, authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and their beloved Yorkshire

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Deehan, Tom (24 April 2016). "BBC drama To Walk Invisible was shot on location in Yorkshire". thelocationguide.com . Retrieved 19 November 2016. What comes in between the introduction of the book and this delightful appendix of maps, is a sprawling narrative, in which Stewart intersperses his personal wanderings along the various Brontë trails, with memories and asides, bits of Brontë biography, conjecture about characters in the novels, historial fact and analysis, and random anecdotes about the people he meets on his travels. It is a confusing, though lively approach, which might flummox any reader not as intimately connected with the local geography – and the lives of the Brontës – as Stewart is himself. A more conventional, contextual overview, both of the landscape and of the lives of the main protagonists, would have been helpful. But there is plenty here to delight and to intrigue.

As well as being full of interesting facts and figures about the South Pennine Hills (West of Bradford), this is a travelogue with heart and soul. It’s easy to see how passionate Stewart is of this windswept land of purple heather, wuthering weather and moors as far as the eye can see. It’s a love letter to the Brontë’s and the area they called home. Overall, I highly recommend Walking the Invisible. It would make a great gift for Brontë fans, and I can see this one flying off the shelves at the parsonage bookstore for years to come.

In the United States, it aired on 26 March 2017 on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theater, under the title To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters. [3] Title [ edit ]

At the end of the book Stewart includes several walks inspired by each of the siblings. Ranging from an easy 4-mile loop around Thornton to a bracingly strenuous 14.5 mile romp across the moors, there’s something for everyone and come complete with well-illustrated maps and clear step-by-step instructions. The majority of the walks take in at least one of the Brontë Stones, as well as many of the other places said to have inspired the family’s writings. I loved the feel of bruised and brooding clouds over moors, almost permanent rain and mizzle, pubs, pints, camping and characters. It’s a really wonderful journey. This is a love letter to the people and places of Brontë country, but at the same time a fascinating bottom-up social, historical and political commentary on the landscape that shaped the life and writings of all the Brontës. The physical locations are explored with links explained to the Brontës works such as ‘𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝕞𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕠𝕗 ℕ𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕙 𝕃𝕖𝕖𝕤 ℍ𝕒𝕝𝕝, 𝔸𝕘𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝔸𝕤𝕙𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕥, 𝕚𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕤𝕒𝕚𝕕, 𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕞𝕒𝕕 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕗𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕒 𝕡𝕒𝕕𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕞 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕕𝕚𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕒 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖.’ I love this connection to Jane Eyre and the inspiration for Thornfield Hall. I’ve enjoyed this walk along paths and byeways, exploring the world of the Brontë’s and some of the origins of their work.

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The journeys taken cover the Haworth moorland and the streets of Bradford, inner-city Manchester, the Peak District and Scarborough. The author also retraces the walks he took along the Lancashire canals whilst writing Ill Will. The chapters span those places that held the deepest personal significance to the Brontes themselves, as well as those that held wider political and historical importance to the times in which they were writing. There is again something about connecting these history lessons with the act of walking which makes them seem even more significant. Discussions of the Liverpool slave trade, the Yorkshire Luddites, and the private co-opting of England's wild lands all seem far more relevant when discussed in relation to the land as it exists today. Like the best nature writing and walking guides, Walking the Invisible presents walking as a radical and creative process and one necessary for anyone wanting to understand the political and cultural history of England. I walked recently through the North York Moors national park and along the Yorkshire coast, reaching Scarborough, and climbed towards its castle high on a clifftop, and to the grave of Anne Brontë, who died aged 29 and is buried in a churchyard beneath the castle. By the sea she so loved, it was easy to see and feel how the landscape of the north so powerfully shaped the literature and lives of the Brontës. This evocative book encourages people to engage with the places that proved so inspirational. As I walk, Anne’s haunting last words to her sister Charlotte echo through my mind: “Take courage.”

The book makes you want to walk in Stewart’s (and the Brontës’!) footsteps and I can’t wait to visit Yorkshire again with the volume in hand. I especially loved reading about the genesis of the Brontë Stones project—a group of stones with poems honoring the sisters, which walkers can visit in the Thornton/Haworth area—and about the wide range of personalities whom Stewart has encountered due to their voracious love of the Brontës. He doesn’t offer a definitive answer as to why so many of us continue to be fascinated by one of literature’s most famous families, but his book will be a valuable artifact speaking to the early twenty-first-century version of the Brontë Myth (one which owes more to Kate Bush than to academia). Following in the footsteps of the Brontës across meadow and moor, through village and town, award-winning writer Michael Stewart takes a series of inspirational walks through the lives and landscapes of the Brontë family, investigating the geographical and social features that shaped their work. It is a walking book, but it is also a social and literary history of the North,” Stewart writes. Along the way, he perceptively excavates the past, exploring how it was in the north that the Industrial Revolution took off, “thanks to a combination of soft water, steep hills and cheap labour”. As well as fascinating historical context, he paints a vivid portrait of the present day, too, as he walks through landscapes both bleak and beautiful, equally adept at capturing the gloom of an industrial estate and “a brilliant blue and golden orange kingfisher”, which makes him think of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. He compellingly conjures the force of the winds, the earthy smell of peat bogs, the haunting call of the curlew, the sound of skylarks. But moving past the language, Lots of discussion about Bramwell and the characters from the sisters books, but the sisters themselves are largely absent. Indeed, He seems only interested in the male characters of the books.Through the eyes of Stewart I saw Haworth, the pub Branwell frequented, the school Emily taught, and Ponden Kirk. As a working-class lad educated at a run-down comprehensive in Salford, however, he is also keenly aware of the differences between the imagined ‘North’ that is so often romanticised by Brontë aficionados – and sought out by literary tourists from across the globe – and the often harsh realities of life in the industrialised towns and isolated villages around which the Brontë siblings lived and worked. His walking accounts frequently juxtapose the breath-taking beauty of the landscape and the generosity of its people with the lived realities of run-down farms, fly-tipping, rural poverty, and cold, unrelenting rain. What can I say. Michael Stewart knows how to describe scenery, and for that part I really loved this book, but at times, it also was boring and I noticed I stopped caring. I can't really say more than that it was okay and that it's okay to be just that. Maybe if you really are into the Brontes, it's more your cup of tea, but for me it was slightly too much and I just zoned out to enjoy the 'scenery' as if I was walking through the landscapes that were described.