{"title":"Helen Macewan","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"down-the-belliard-steps-book-helen-macewan-9780957377202","title":"Down the Belliard Steps","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543331938577,"sku":"GOR008929495","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50555203092753,"sku":"GOR009547476","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0957377207.jpg?v=1750820227"},{"product_id":"through-belgian-eyes-book-helen-macewan-9781845199104","title":"Through Belgian Eyes","description":"That makes Villette, considered by many to be Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece, of particular interest as a portrait of the Belgian capital a decade after the country gained independence in 1830, and just before modernisation and expansion transformed the city out of all recognition from the villette (small town) that Charlotte knew.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49545373843729,"sku":"GOR010682529","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52500598620433,"sku":"NGR9781845199104","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53687366942993,"sku":"GOR015002789","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845199103.jpg?v=1751379214"},{"product_id":"winifred-gerin-book-helen-macewan-9781845197438","title":"Winifred Gerin","description":"The biographer Winifred Gerin (1901-81), who wrote the lives of all four Bronte siblings, stumbled on her literary vocation on a visit to Haworth, after a difficult decade following the death of her first husband. On the same visit she met her second husband, a Bronte enthusiast twenty years her junior. Together they turned their backs on London to live within sight of the Parsonage, Gerin believing that full understanding of the Brontes required total immersion in their environment. Gerin's childhood and youth, like the Brontes', was characterised by a cultured home and intense imaginative life shared with her sister and two brothers, and by family tragedies (the loss of two siblings in early life). Strong cultural influences formed the children's imagination: polyglot parents, French history, the Crystal Palace, Old Vic productions. Winifred's years at Newnham College, Cambridge were enlivened by eccentric characters such as the legendary lecturer Quiller-Couch (Q'), Lytton Strachey's sister Pernel and Bloomsbury's favourite philosopher, G.E. Moore. Her happy life in Paris with her Belgian cellist husband, Eugene Gerin, was brought to an abrupt end by the Second World War, in which the couple had many adventures: fleeing occupied Belgium, saving Jews in Nice in Vichy France, escaping through Spain and Portugal to England, where they did secret war work for Political Intelligence near Bletchley. After Eugene's death in 1945 Winifred coped with bereavement through poetry and playwriting until discovering her true literary metier on the trip to Haworth. She also wrote about Elizabeth Gaskell, Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Fanny Burney. The book is based on her letters and on her unpublished memoir.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50468828905745,"sku":"GOR007562293","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1845197437.jpg?v=1751027608"},{"product_id":"down-the-belliard-steps-book-helen-macewan-9781803818658","title":"Down The Belliard Steps","description":"'A craze blown across the Channel from Britain to Brussels - people who meet to talk about the works of the Brontë sisters.' (From a Brussels press article about the newly-formed Brussels Brontë Group)    In 1842 Charlotte and Emily Brontë arrived in Brussels to study French at the Pensionnat Heger boarding school at the bottom of the 'Belliard steps'. Their stay in the Belgian capital is the least-known episode of their lives, despite the importance of Charlotte's years in Belgium for her life and work; two of her novels ('Villette' and 'The Professor') were inspired by her time in Brussels and her love for her teacher, Constantin Heger. 'Down the Belliard Steps' tells the story of a group of enthusiasts coming together in Brussels to explore the sisters' time in the city.    Beginning with her personal experience as a newcomer to 'the capital of Europe' in 2004, Helen MacEwan tells of her journey of discovery into the history of a vanished quarter of Brussels and her quest to seek out fellow Brontë enthusiasts - a quest that leads to the formation of a literary society, the Brussels Brontë Group. 'Down the Belliard Steps' describes the people she encounters and the adventures she has along the way. We meet an Heger descendant, learn about the re-discovery of a lost Brontë 'devoir' (one of the Brontës' 40 extant French essays written under Heger's direction) and search in Brussels cemeteries for the tomb of a friend of the Brontës who died in a Brussels school. We meet researchers and people inspired creatively by the Brontës. We delve into what it is that draws so many people, from all walks of life, to feel an affinity with members of the world's most famous literary family.    Today, the Brussels Brontë Group is a flourishing, multinational literary community, promoting interest in the Brontës through talks, guided walks and reading groups. 'Down the Belliard Steps', crammed with information and anecdotes about Charlotte and Emily's time in the Belgian capital, is a light-hearted but intensely personal and romantic account of the Group's genesis and flowering.    The book is a 'must-read' for literary enthusiasts and if any encouragement were needed to visit the Brontës' Brussels, it would be difficult to find anything more seductive than this enchanting narrative.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51233563967761,"sku":"NIN9781803818658","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803818654.jpg?v=1750962602"},{"product_id":"brontes-in-brussels-book-helen-macewan-9780720615883","title":"The Brontes In Brussels","description":"\u003cp style=\"BORDER-TOP-COLOR: ; BORDER-LEFT-COLOR: ; BORDER-BOTTOM-COLOR: ; BORDER-RIGHT-COLOR:\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eA fascinating and thorough account of Charlotte and Emily Bront#65533;'s formative stay in Brussels during 1842-43\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp style=\"BORDER-TOP-COLOR: ; BORDER-LEFT-COLOR: ; BORDER-BOTTOM-COLOR: ; BORDER-RIGHT-COLOR:\"\u003eThe Bront#65533;s' time in Belgium, five years before they became best-selling authors, is the least-known episode of their lives, but is a fascinating and important one. The book follows in the tracks of the sisters in Brussels, describing their life in the city: though the school where they came to study French has now disappeared, there is still a lot to be seen of the city the sisters knew; two of Charlotte's four novels (\u003ci\u003eVillette\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Professor\u003c\/i\u003e) are also based on her spell abroad, which was pivotal to her both as a writer and personally, since she fell in love with her teacher Constantin Heger. Charlotte's moving and harrowing letters to Heger--a respectable married man--are reproduced in full here and belie the common image of her as the motherly and strait-laced Bront#65533;. Also including maps of the period, extracts from Villette reflecting real-life experiences in Brussels and translations of the sisters' little-known \"Belgian essays,\" what emerges is a complete portrait of a slice of literary history--as well as a haunting evocation of a time and a place that came to haunt the Bront#65533;s themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51312716284177,"sku":"GOR008775018","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51312720445713,"sku":"GOR013761867","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51312723263761,"sku":"CIN0720615887G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0720615887.jpg?v=1751327647"},{"product_id":"brontes-in-brussels-book-helen-macewan-9781805680345","title":"The Brontes in Brussels","description":"A compelling, detailed account of a major turning point in the lives of Charlotte and Emily Bronte.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51793128161553,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51793128456465,"sku":"NGR9781805680345","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53039148990737,"sku":"GOR014709923","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781805680345.jpg?v=1777629874"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-helen-macewan.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}