A Field-Guide to the Brontës’ Literary Universe

In late May 2022, a reporter found themselves in Yorkshire after a transatlantic flight and a LNER train, captivated by the late spring blooms along the high moors and lowland valley, which included bluebells, cowslips, and fields of bright yellow meadow buttercups. The Brontë sisters lived in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and their novels had accompanied the reporter from their pre-teen years through graduate school and into a professional life as a Victorianist.

The landscape in which the Brontës lived, with its specific flora, influenced their experience of the natural world and shaped their narratives.

The Brontë sisters' experiences were often surrounded by specific plants, such as the wild primrose (Primula vulgaris). Charlotte Brontë painted a watercolor of the primrose, and in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Catherine Linton teases Hareton by sticking primroses in his plate of porridge. In Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey, three lovely primroses are gathered from high up between the twisted roots of an oak, symbolizing the character's virtue and ideal mind.

The primrose did not require deep knowledge of the natural world, as it was a common flower described in John Gerard's 1597 herbal. However, the visual accessibility of flowers, which were often seen as beautiful and imaginative, had become increasingly distant and endangered, even as they remained important for understanding classic novels.