author
Patrick Brontë
1777–1861
An Irish-born clergyman and writer, he is remembered both for his own books and poems and for the extraordinary literary family he raised at Haworth Parsonage. His long life stretched from rural County Down to the heart of one of English literature’s most famous households.
1 Audiobook
Cottage Poems
by Patrick Brontë
About the author
Born in County Down, Ireland, on 17 March 1777, Patrick Brontë was the eldest of ten children in a modest family and was born Patrick Brunty or Prunty before adopting the Brontë spelling. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, was ordained in the Church of England in 1807, and spent most of his adult life in England as an Anglican clergyman.
He also wrote throughout his life, publishing poetry, fiction, and prose, including Winter Evening Thoughts and The Cottage in the Wood. In 1820 he became perpetual curate at Haworth, the Yorkshire parsonage that would later become inseparable from the work of his children Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell Brontë.
Patrick Brontë is often introduced simply as the Brontë sisters’ father, but his own life was remarkable in its own right: he rose from poverty through education, maintained a serious literary career, and endured profound family loss, outliving his wife Maria and all six of their children. He died at Haworth on 7 June 1861, after more than forty years at the parsonage.