fiction is not real

is this take hot or ice cold i don't know

A few days ago, I finished a book called The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller, which is about how the literary reputations of the Brontës were created—as “literary figures,” that is, not in terms of their actual writing. Very interesting book if you like that sort of thing, which I do. From this book I learned some interesting facts but few more interesting to me than that the Brontë book that apparently caused far and away the most outrage at its time of publication was not Wuthering Heights (which would have been my first guess) and not Villette (which would have been my second guess) but Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a sensible story about how if your husband is an abusive alcoholic you should pack up the baby and get out.

I would never in a thousand years have guessed people were outraged by this novel. You learn something every day.¹

As Miller o…