author
Francis A. Leyland
Best remembered for a detailed early study of the Brontë family, this 19th-century writer helped preserve stories about Branwell Brontë and the world around the famous siblings. His work still matters to readers interested in literary history and Victorian biography.
2 Audiobooks
The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 1 of 2
by Francis A. Leyland
The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2
by Francis A. Leyland
About the author
A Halifax antiquarian, publisher, and writer, Francis A. Leyland is chiefly known for The Brontë Family, with Special Reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë, published in 1886. The book focuses especially on Branwell Brontë and has remained one of the notable early works connected with Brontë scholarship.
Available records about his life are fairly sparse, but he is associated with Halifax in Yorkshire and with a family active in local cultural life. A Wikipedia entry on his brother, sculptor Joseph Bentley Leyland, identifies Francis A. Leyland as a Halifax antiquarian and publisher, which fits the character of his surviving work.
For modern listeners, Leyland is interesting not just as a biographer, but as someone writing close enough to the Victorian period to capture how the Brontës were being remembered in the late 19th century. Even when later scholars have revised parts of that picture, his writing remains a valuable window into early Brontë enthusiasm and literary biography.