SOURCE: Collins, Robert G. Introduction to The Hand of the Arch-Sinner: Two Angrian Chronicles of Branwell Brontë, edited by Robert G. Collins, pp. ix-xliii. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Collins offers a comprehensive introduction to two of Brontë's Angrian chronicles, The Life of … Northangerland and Real Life in Verdopolis, describing their inception among the tales of the Brontë children's “Great Glasstown Confederacy” and noting their emphasis on the figure of the Luciferian anti-hero.

I only feel that every power— And Thou hadst given much to me— Was spent upon the present hour, Was never turned, my God, to Thee; 

That what I did to make me blest Sooner or later changed to pain; That still I laughed at peace and rest, So neither must behold again. 

8 August 1841.¹

To reduce a man's life to a chronology is, paradoxically, to leave everything—or nothing—to the imagination...