Romer Wilson’s Experimental Biography of Emily Brontë (1928)

The works of Romer Wilson, born in Sheffield in 1891, are nearly all restlessly experimental in form, tone or subject. Wilson attracted mixed reviews in life, and little critical attention after dying in 1930. Starting with a biographical sketch, the essay focuses on All Alone – The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë (Chatto & Windus, 1928). This highly experimental psychobiography transforms the genre’s conventions, drawing its truth not from Brontë's life but from her writings, and the sense of place the two shared. The stream-of-consciousness narration and obsessive interiority reveal as much about Wilson as Brontë, with frequent reflections on childhood, artistic creation and the nature of reality, resulting in an early hybrid of biography and autobiography. Wilson strongly identifies with Brontë, portraying them both as outside conventions, driven by hidden impulses, and producing an in effect proto-modernist Emily Brontë. The essay explores the often hostile reception for All Alone and argues for rediscovering Romer Wilson, a lost Yorkshire modernist.