Having enjoyed some of the author's novels, I was intrigued to see what she would make of the character of the only male Bronte sibling. I have made allowances for the fact that this book was written a long time ago, ahead of the more modern scholarship such as the huge biography of the whole Bronte family written by Juliet Barker, which I read alongside this, but there are many weaknesses.

In places it is quite obvious that the novelist has taken over from the biographer, with scenes and dialogue constructed from surmise or outright fictionalising. In others, as Barker's book makes clear, du Maurier, like most of the biographers who followed Elizabeth Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte", takes its steer from that book on many aspects, although du Maurier doesn't quite turn the family's father, Patrick, into the monster portrayed by Gaskell.

Some of du Maurier's speculation reads oddly these days. Because it appears that the young son of his employer Mr Robinson remained behind with him while the rest of the family went to Scarborough and it is only after the son apparently arrived there that Mr Robinson wrote a letter sacking Branwell in very strong terms, she comes up with the theory that he must have tried to make paedophilic advances to the boy. This would be far more shocking than the reality - that Branwell had been either having an affair with his employer's wife or at least showing inappropriate attraction to her. du Maurier dismisses Branwell's own explanation to his family for why he has lost his job as tutor - an affair with Mrs Robinson - because she has a fixed idea that he was increasingly lost in an unreal melodramatic world based on his childhood writings, which rendered him unable to distinguish between real life and fiction and that, acting out the behaviour of his anti-hero Northangerland, he had molested the boy or exposed himself to him. Barker's book shows that the assumed date of the boy's arrival is based on a local newspaper column which often got dates wrong or missed people out, and that there is much better evidence showing that he accompanied his family and was not left behind. It also gives a lot of evidence to support Branwell's assertion, not least of which is that Mrs Robinson sent servants to make financial payments to Branwell to keep him away from her - to buy him off basically. Barker's book also makes it clear that he didn't take heavily to the bottle until after he was sacked and his unrealistic hopes to marry Mrs Robinson were finally dashed, so he was not blurring reality with fantasy under the influence of drink and drugs (laudanum) when still in the Robinsons' employ.

Interestingly du Maurier does cast doubt on whether Branwell was a thwarted genius and decides that most of his work wasn't very good, portraying him not exactly as overindulged - in a family which lived on the meagre salary of Patrick - but more as the little boy who dominated his sisters, had a big personality and was expected to be an artistic or literary success when in fact he lacked the talent of his sisters. It is interesting that, unlike them, he was never sent away to school even for a short period. It becomes increasingly clear that he lacked not only their talent but also their application and effort, preferring to live off his father, run up debts which he expected Patrick or his friends to pay, and retreat from his unrealistic ideas of fame and fortune into an alcohol and laudanum haze.

One assertion of du Maurier's which appears to be unique to her is her idea that Branwell must have been epileptic. And there are other points where the book has to be treated with caution. As Barker makes clear, the sections where Branwell carouses with Irish labourers whom she calls "boaties" while he is working away as a railway clerk is fictional and seems to have originated with du Maurier - there were no Irish people living in the locality at that period. She also has him living at a pub which did not actually exist at the time. These and other mistakes render the whole book more of a fictional account of the life rather than one on which to trust, although the extracts from Branwell's juvenilia and later poems are of interest. Given these major reservations, I can only award the book an OK 2 stars. ( )

An exercise for the reader who has a passing familiarity with both the life of Branwell Brontë and the writing of Daphne du Maurier: just imagine for a moment what you think a biography of Branwell Brontë written by Daphne du Maurier might be like. This book is pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be: full of feeling, sometimes ridiculous and overreaching, morbid, with occasional lurid speculations and unexpected psychological conjectures. Still, for the right person there's something enjoyable about it.

She is comically hard on most of Branwell's writing, in a way that suggests that she takes his failure very personally: "fourth-rate stuff," "a Sunday School child of seven could have done better," "lame couplets," "interminable elegy," etc. It's a little much.

The best parts of the book are the details of the supposed conversation with George Searle Phillips indicating that Branwell knew Charlotte was the author of Jane Eyre, and Branwell's correspondence with sculptor Joseph Leyland.

It's hard to know what to think of Branwell: one one hand he was such a burden and a liar and a fuck-up. On the other hand, he really suffered, and it's hard not to sympathize with someone of whom greatness is expected, who has talent but not strength, whose dreams and ambitions are larger than his world. "I only know that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing."

One thing Daphne du Maurier and I agree about is that "Peaceful Death and Happy Life" is a powerful and awesome poem:

Why dost thou sorrow for the happy dead
For if their life be lost, their toils are o'er
And woe and want shall trouble them no more,
Nor ever slept they in an earthly bed
So sound as now they sleep while dreamless, laid
In the dark chambers of that unknown shore
Where Night and Silence seal each guarded door:
So turn from such as these thy drooping head
And mourn the 'dead alive' - whose spirit flies -
Whose life departs before his death has come -
Who finds no Heaven beyond Life's gloomy skies,
Who sees no Hope to brighten up that gloom;
Tis HE who feels the worm that never dies -
The REAL death and darkness of the tomb. ( )

The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte is a brief biography of the least-known of the Bronte siblings: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne’s brother Branwell, believed by his sisters to be the most brilliant of all the siblings. Born the only boy in a family of girls, a lot was expected of Branwell; but tied down by his imagination, which he fueled into the fictional world of Angria, a lack of job prospects, a disastrous affair, and a drug addiction, he died at the young age of 31 and was eventually eclipsed by his sisters. Yet Branwell was a moderately good poet and artist.

In this short biography, Du Maurier draws from Branwell’s poems, prose, and letters to giver her reader more of an idea of what he was like. And yet, it’s hard to know, trapped as he was in his own “infernal world,” a phrase that Du Maurier uses way too many times in the book but which is as good as any to describe how much Branwell’s mind disturbed him. It’s hard to get a good idea of what any of the Bronte siblings was like, since they were so introverted, but Du Maurier does a good job here of painting a rough portrait. I liked the fact that she addressed the rumors that Branwell helped to author Wuthering Heights. Branwell was a highly imaginative and emotional person, and its possible that he might have contributed ideas for it.

I think, though, that there’s a lot of speculation, especially over what happened at Thorp Green with his dismissal from the Robinsons’ employ. Du Maurier hints at, but does not say explicitly or prove, inappropriate behavior on the part of Branwell towards the Robinsons’ son Edmond. But since Du Maurier only hints at it, the reader is left to come to her own conclusions about what she might have meant—a sexual relationship? Or did Branwell allow Edmund to see him under the influence of drugs? Despite the ambiguity of this point, I did like the way that she portrayed Emily Bronte, my favorite of the sisters—aloof, undemonstrative, often misunderstood by those who didn’t know her well. ( )

I think I expected this to be a fairly straightforward biography of Patrick Branwell Bronte, brother to Anne, Charlotte, and Emily. However, it did not come off that way. I love Daphne du Maurier's writing in general, but this book was too flowery, too much conjecture, disjointed narratives, and very confusing to follow. If you know nothing about Branwell (like me), it's an interesting overview, but the writing went way over the top sometimes, and if I wanted to know more about him, I would have looked for a different book. ( )

This novel gives us a glimpse into the life of Branwell Bronte the only brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, who is often considered to be the failure of the family and who died very young at the age of thirty, a death many have considered to be caused by his excessive use of alcohol and laudanum. I am a very big fan of Daphne du Maurier and reading her books is a treat and something I savor. Also, I was really looking forward to reading this book I, like many fans of the Bronte’s work including the novels they wrote as children have always been fascinated by their lives and the motivations behind their unique ability to create such wonderful thought provoking stories. In my opinion Branwell is one of the biggest mysteries in literary history because I feel like biographers side step him as being a failure to the family, the man whose potential was never achieved and I have always wondered if that is what he was really like. Since we will never know I was excited when I came across this novel by Daphne du Maurier and I was looking forward to reading her interpretations about Branwell’s life. I really enjoyed the writing in this book, as in all of Daphne du Maurier’s books it flows very well and takes on an almost poetic quality. It hardly reads as a biography and more like a novel or story. I have not read the other biographies that Daphne du Maurier wrote so I can’t comment on how this one compares with the others but I really enjoyed reading this. I found her ideas and interpretations of the time to be very unique to other biographies I read on the Brontes, and I enjoyed the way she uses some of Branwell’s poetry to enhance her ideas. I also enjoyed the introduction to this novel by Justine Picardie. I would suggest this book to anyone who is interested in reading about the Brontes as I thought it was a very excellent addition. ( )