Patrick Bronte is a legendary name in literature, the father of the Bronte sisters.
Bronte is a name as English as the stones of Yorkshire. Except it isn’t — it’s an assumed name. Patrick Bronte was born poor, Irish, and Brunty.
His father was a field worker. But his son Patrick was intelligent and diligent. Eldest of 10 children, he began work as a blacksmith’s apprentice at 12.
Fate intervened when a priest discovered him walking down the road reading Milton’s Paradise Lost out loud. He was sent to the parish school to be educated. Later he was hired as a teacher. Thus began an unlikely journey from the blighted potato fields to genteel respectability.
When he was admitted to Cambridge, Patrick completed his transformation by changing his surname from Brunty to Bronte. Bronte is the Greek word for thunder. It seems fitting for the father of such Titans of literature.
