Kate Pennington (1) (–1949)

This book looks at the life of the Bronte sisters and what may have inspired them to write Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It tells the story of Emily wandering the moors and running into the groom Heselington ( ie Heathcliff) who has been cast out from his cosseted life at Hartcross after he and the owners' daughter had been discovered planning to elope. Emily acts as a go-between from H to Mary ( although she believes Mary's intentions to H are not as empassioned as are his) and it all gets incredibly tangled and messy when H is accused of murdering Mary's father, her brother James swears to disinherit her, and then H hold Emily hostage overnight in an abandoned cottage on the moors. This book would be of interest to fans of Wuthering Heights although I am not sure how much of it is based on fact.… (mehr)

Set at the time of Queen Elizabeth I and the famous Walter Raleigh incident where he throws his cloak in the mud for her to step on. Mary works sewing clothes with her father and uncle in a rich lords’ house. Then she is commissioned to make Walter R ‘s cloak. But there is a lot of intrigue and her father stumbles on a plot to kill the Q and is killed andhis workshop set alight. Mary has witnessed all this but keeps quiet & takes over her father’s work – sewing a cloak for Walter that is subsequently trampled on by the Queen. M loses hope and suspects that W might be involved and then there is a terrible attack on the Queen herself that M witnesses where W must prove whether he is true to the throne or not.… (mehr)