Stephanie Cowell's The Man in the Stone Cottage reflects on the creative life of the Brontë sisters

Stephanie Cowell’s latest novel to explore the inner lives of artistic people from the past reveals the passions of the Brontë sisters, primarily Emily and Charlotte. These talented siblings have figured in many unique works of fiction. They all died tragically young, and the best literary interpretations grant us the wish that they might live again on the page. As this one does.

Mystery surrounds the title character. In 1846, on one of her regular walks through the moorlands of west Yorkshire, Emily meets a shepherd from the Outer Hebrides living in a stone cottage which had previously been in ruins. Affable and kind, he doesn’t much resemble Heathcliff, the brooding, mercurial hero she invents later on, though has his own bittersweet story of loneliness and exile that has the air of a Celtic legend.

Their meetings are at first infrequent, but memorable, and Emily holds them secret. Is he real, or did she wish him into being? Years after Emily’s death, having long suspected there was a man in her sister’s life, Charlotte find traces of their relationship and seeks out the truth. The shepherd remains secondary to the main story of the sisters’ lives, but his presence is emblematic of the novel’s themes.

The characters are vividly drawn, and their emotional depth, combined with judicious choices on which scenes to depict over the novel’s nine-year span, gives this fairly short novel (260pp) considerable dimension. We follow Charlotte from her heartbreak over unrequited love through years of poverty at the Haworth parsonage, the Brontës’ beloved home, and her unexpected fame when her authorship of Jane Eyre becomes known. Emily is intensely private, a wild spirit who loves roaming outdoors, though she doesn’t neglect her domestic chores.

Their brother Branwell’s self-destruction over romantic failure and the weight of self-imposed expectations troubles Emily greatly due to their closeness. Anne Brontë describes Branwell aptly in a letter, saying of him that “he wants to step into greatness as if he opened a tower door.” With their stubborn father nearly blind from cataracts, refusing help, and in denial about their penury, Charlotte knows it’s up to her and her sisters to support their family.

The small village of Haworth and its environs are beautiful and bleak, an atmospheric character in itself, and one with great influence. “She took the dull brown of the moor in winter and the endless loneliness of the exiled and dead and blended them in ink and paper,” we learn about Emily, seeing how her characters preoccupy her mind wherever she is. Here and elsewhere in this immersive biographical novel, the creative power of the imagination continues to echo.

The Man in the Stone Cottage will be out from Regal House next week.