title: AJR (band)

text: The brothers released their third EP, titled "What Everyone's Thinking", on September 16, 2016, which features the lead single "Weak". The lead single was written by the band within a few hours, without any idea of the future success the single would have. "Weak" had been certified Platinum in the U.S., Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Belgium, and Gold in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Australia. It has over 600 million streams on Spotify.


title: AJR (band)

text: The band released its second studio album, "The Click", on June 9, 2017, featuring the singles "Weak", "Drama" and "Sober Up", which features frontman Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, who co-wrote the track. This song reached number one on the Mediabase Alternative Singles chart in 2018. The band's 2018 tour in support of the album, "The Click Tour", featured Hundred Handed, Grizfolk, Ocean Park Standoff, and MAX as openers.


title: AJR (band)

text: In 2017, AJR released "It's On Us", a single written in collaboration with the It's On Us campaign, which was launched by Barack Obama in 2014 to combat sexual assault on college campuses across the United States.


title: AJR (band)

text: An extended version of "The Click" was released on September 21, 2018. "The Click (Deluxe Edition)" included new tracks such as "Role Models", "Normal" and "Burn the House Down", the latter which the band released in March 2018 as a single and reached number two on the Mediabase Alternative Singles chart. Also included was "Pretender – Acoustic", an acoustic version of "Pretender", which was a collaboration between AJR, EDM artist Steve Aoki and American rapper Lil Yachty.


title: AJR (band)

text: On January 30, 2019, AJR released "100 Bad Days", the first single for their then-unannounced album: "Neotheater." A music video was released on March 8. The song was included on Taylor Swift's Apple Music playlist, "Playlist by ME!" in May 2019. The lyrics, "maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories, a hundred good stories make me interesting at parties," are used in Taylor's description of this playlist of songs she loves and appreciates. On March 5, the band teased the second single, "Birthday Party". On March 11, the band announced their third studio album, "Neotheater", which was to be released on April 26. "100 Bad Days", was performed on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on March 11. On March 11, the promotional single, "Birthday Party" was released. The second single, "Dear Winter", was teased on April 1, and released on April 5, with a music video being released later that same day. The album debuted on April 26 at number one on "Billboard"s Top Alternative Albums, number one on "Billboard"s Top Rock Albums, and number eight on "Billboard"s Top 200 Albums. On October 25, the group released "Dear Winter 2.0", re-imagining the song by "changing the production and upping the emotion".


title: AJR (band)

text: On February 12, 2020, the single "Bang!" was released, with a music video following the next day. The single at its release was intended to be part of the deluxe version of their album "Neotheater", but was scrapped and made the lead single for "OK Orchestra". A follow-up single was released on August 31, 2020, titled "Bummerland". On December 22, 2020, AJR released "My Play". AJR then took to their Twitter account and other social media accounts to announce "OK Orchestra", on December 20, 2020. On February 17, 2021, the band released "Way Less Sad" with a music video on the same day. "OK Orchestra" was then released on March 26, 2021. The album has 13 tracks, including "Ordinaryish People" with the Blue Man Group. On March 21, 2021, AJR released "OKO World", an interactive game on AJR's website. The new merchandise for the album was released on March 23. Their success with the song "Bang!" lead them to win a Billboard Music Award for "Top Rock Song" In 2021. On August 30, they released a remix of "Record Player" with its original performers Daisy the Great in which they added their own verses and production.


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 24, 2021, the band released a music video for their song “The Good Part” from their 2017 album "The Click."


title: AJR (band)

text: On March 11, 2022, the band announced that they will be working in collaboration with theatre producer Vivek J. Tiwary in a Broadway adaptation of the children's book "Harold and the Purple Crayon." The show will be produced by Tiwary's TEG+, with original songs by the band. On September 23, 2022, it was announced that the book for the musical will be written by playwrights Robert Quillen Camp and Dan Rothenberg. This adaptation will feature Harold in a later stage of life compared to the books, with the band releasing a statement saying, "We adored "Harold and the Purple Crayon" growing up, and we thought: what if we saw Harold as a young adult, realizing that his problems are too profound to simply draw away." As of yet, no release date for the show has been announced.


title: AJR (band)

text: On April 22, 2022, the band announced that a new song would be releasing before the OK Orchestra Tour resumed, they shared a snippet of the song along with a presave link that showed that the song was titled "???", with numerous outlets calling the song "I Won't". This was apparently confirmed as the official name as the setlist for the OK Orchestra tour has it listed as such. "I Won't" was officially released on July 29, 2022, with its accompanying music video released a day later.


title: AJR (band)

text: In June 2022, the band teased an upcoming fifth album on Twitter, with the caption "Think we just wrote our next album opener."


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 6, 2022, the band released the final episode of the OK Orchestra Tour Documentary alongside a tweet that read "Final OKO Tour Doc is out on YouTube now. What a time. The next time we post will be a new era announcement. See you soon."


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 11, 2022, the band released an image of a logo that read "MTM" alongside the caption "TOMORROW."


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 12, 2022, the band released a video teaser announcing the new era alongside the caption "A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN. TMM"


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 13, 2022, the band announced that a new single titled "The DJ is Crying for Help" was releasing very soon. Multiple snippets of the song were released prior to the reveal. On November 18th, the song made its official debut, accompanied with its music video right after.


title: AJR (band)

text: AJR has opened for Fifth Harmony, Lindsey Stirling, Hoodie Allen, Train, Fitz and the Tantrums, Andy Grammer, We the Kings, Demi Lovato, Ingrid Michaelson, Sammy Adams, American Authors, and Melanie Martinez.


title: AJR (band)

text: Their Neotheater World Tour took the band to Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland in November 2019. On November 13, 2019, the group announced the Neotheater World Tour Part 2. Dates were released on November 15.


title: AJR (band)

text: On May 14, 2020, the band announced the cancellation of their upcoming tours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stating via Twitter that "it’s more important to us that [our fans] are safe".


title: AJR (band)

text: On July 21, 2020, AJR announced their drive-in show ""A night in your car with AJR"" which took place on August 19, 2020, in Philadelphia. Two days later after the first show had sold out entirely, they announced a second show for Philadelphia which took place on August 20, 2020. This is also where they first sang their song "Bummerland".


title: AJR (band)

text: On November 19, 2020, AJR announced their first virtual concert, "AJR's One Spectacular Night", which took place on December 26, 2020. It was interactive, with features such as allowing you to clap after songs, change the camera you're viewing through, along with other interactive features to both simulate a typical live concert and experiment with the benefits of livestreaming.


title: AJR (band)

text: The brothers have described themselves as "culturally Jewish". Their parents are Gary Metzger an architect, and Laurie Marvald, who began her career as an architect, attending Cornell University then moved on to entrepreneurship. Laurie was the original founder and manager of AJR, creating and developing the band. Laurie also was a co-founder of AJR Productions, LLC and served as co-manager of the band until 2022. The 3 members of AJR grew up in Bayside, Queens until moving to Chelsea, Manhattan in 2001. They attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. Jack was a child actor, appearing in "The Pink Panther 2" as well as an episode of "".


title: AJR (band)

text: Adam received a BA from Columbia University, majoring in business and philosophy, an MA from New York University, and PhD in International Human Rights Law from the University of Birmingham, while Ryan and Jack studied film at Columbia University.


title: AJR (band)

text: Ryan has synesthesia and has said it helps him with his music production process, stating in a YouTube video: "I see visuals when I'm hearing the music, and that very much helps when I'm building … and choosing the right drums."


title: Hamish Linklater

text: Hamish Linklater (born July 7, 1976) is an American actor and playwright. He is known for playing Matthew Kimble in "The New Adventures of Old Christine", Andrew Keanelly in "The Crazy Ones", and Clark Debussy in "Legion". He is the son of dramatic vocal trainer Kristin Linklater.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2021, he starred as Father Paul in the Netflix horror miniseries "Midnight Mass," for which he received high critical acclaim.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: Linklater was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of Kristin Linklater and James Lincoln Cormeny. His mother was a Scottish-born Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Acting Division at Columbia University and a teacher of vocal technique. A single mother, she raised her son partly in the Berkshires, where she was a founder of the Shakespeare & Company drama troupe. Linklater was eight years old when he began doing small Shakespearean roles.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: His maternal grandparents were Marjorie Linklater, an arts campaigner, and Eric Linklater, who was a Scottish novelist of partly Swedish origin. His uncles are journalist Magnus Linklater and writer Andro Linklater.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: While first establishing himself on the stage, he made his big-screen debut in 2000's "Groove". That was followed by his role as CNN correspondent Richard Roth in the HBO movie "Live from Baghdad". He has since appeared in numerous movies, including "Fantastic Four" (2005). He had a recurring role on the television show "American Dreams" as well as "Gideon's Crossing". He was second-in-line to play Logan on "Dark Angel", but the role went to Michael Weatherly.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: From 2006 until 2010 he was a main cast member in the CBS sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine", as the brother of Christine Campbell, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In July 2006, Linklater appeared in Keith Bunin's "The Busy World Is Hushed" opposite Jill Clayburgh off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. He played the title character in "Hamlet" at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California and the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: On Halloween 2007, Linklater appeared in an episode of "Pushing Daisies" on ABC, entitled "Girth". He also completed the film "The Violent Kind."


title: Hamish Linklater

text: He appeared in The Public Theater's 2009 production of "Twelfth Night" at Shakespeare in the Park as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, opposite Anne Hathaway, Audra McDonald and Raul Esparza.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2011, he starred with Miranda July in "The Future". He made his Broadway debut in October 2011 in Theresa Rebeck's new play "Seminar" opposite Alan Rickman, Jerry O'Connell, Lily Rabe, and Hettienne Park.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2013, he played Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca in the Jackie Robinson biopic film "42". Linklater also joined the cast of Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" in a recurring role, playing senior producer Jerry Dantana. He remained for six episodes, until earning the role of Andrew Keanelly on the CBS series "The Crazy Ones", which premiered in September 2013.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2017, Linklater was cast in a recurring role in the FX original series "Legion", based on the Marvel Comics character, and was promoted to the main cast for its second season. Also in 2017, he had a small role in the third season of the FX black comedy crime drama series "Fargo", created by "Legion" showrunner Noah Hawley.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2020, Linklater was cast in the Amazon Prime series "Tell Me Your Secrets" as John, a convicted rapist seeking redemption by trying to find a missing girl. The series premiered on February 19, 2021.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2021, Linklater starred in Mike Flanagan's Netflix horror miniseries, "Midnight Mass," as Father Paul Hill. It premiered September 24, 2021. He received high critical acclaim and a Critic's Choice nomination for the role.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: Also in 2021, he began filming "Gaslit" as Jeb Magruder, which premiered in 2022 on Starz. In 2022, Walter Hill's western "Dead for a Dollar" premiered at Venice Film Festival and in the United States, with Linklater playing wealthy villain Martin Kidd.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2022, Linklater began filming "Downtown Owl", a film based on the Chuck Klosterman novel of the same name. Linklater is the screenwriter as well as a producer and director for the film.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: Linklater married playwright Jessica Goldberg in January 2002; they divorced in 2012 and have one daughter.


title: Hamish Linklater

text: In 2013, Linklater began a relationship with actress Lily Rabe. They have two daughters, born in March 2017 and July 2020. In September 2021, the couple announced they were expecting their third child.


title: Brontë family

text: The Brontës () were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, originally. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's "Jane Eyre" was the first to know success, while Emily's "Wuthering Heights", Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature later.


title: Brontë family

text: The three sisters and their brother, Branwell (1817–1848), were very close. As children, they developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play, set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set in their fictional world. The deaths of their mother and two older sisters marked them and influenced their writing profoundly, as did their isolated upbringing. They were raised in a religious family. The Brontë birthplace in Thornton is a place of pilgrimage and their later home, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, has hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.


title: Brontë family

text: The Brontë family can be traced to the Irish clan "Ó Pronntaigh", which literally means "descendant of Pronntach". They were a family of hereditary scribes and literary men in Fermanagh. The version "Ó Proinntigh", which was first given by Patrick Woulfe in his ' () and reproduced without question by Edward MacLysaght "inter alia", cannot be accepted as correct, as there were a number of well-known scribes with this name writing in Irish in the 17th and 18th centuries and all of them used the spelling "Ó Pronntaigh". The name is derived from the word or , which is related to the word , meaning "giving" or "bestowal" ( is given as an Ulster version of in O'Reilly's "Irish English Dictionary".) Patrick Woulfe, the author of ', suggested that it was derived from (the refectory of a monastery). "Ó Pronntaigh" was earlier anglicised as "Prunty" and sometimes "Brunty".


title: Brontë family

text: At some point, the father of the sisters, Patrick Brontë (born Brunty), decided on the alternative spelling with the diaeresis over the terminal to indicate that the name has two syllables. Multiple theories exist to account for the change as well, including that he may have wished to hide his humble origins. As a man of letters, he would have been familiar with classical Greek and may have chosen the name after the Greek (). One view, which biographer C. K. Shorter proposed in 1896, is that he adapted his name to associate himself with Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was also Duke of Bronte. One might also find evidence for this theory in Patrick Brontë’s desire to associate himself with the Duke of Wellington in his form of dress.


title: Brontë family

text: Patrick Brontë (17 March 1777 – 7 June 1861), the Brontë sisters' father, was born in Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland, of a family of farm workers of moderate means. His birth name was Patrick Prunty or Brunty. His mother, Alice McClory, was of the Roman Catholic faith, whilst his father Hugh was a Protestant, and Patrick was brought up in his father's faith.


title: Brontë family

text: He was a bright young man and, after studying under the Rev. Thomas Tighe, won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge. There, he studied divinity, ancient history, and modern history. Attending Cambridge may have made him feel that his name was too Irish and he changed its spelling to Brontë (and its pronunciation accordingly), perhaps in honour of Horatio Nelson, whom Patrick admired. It is more likely, however, that his brother William was 'on the run' from the authorities for his involvement with the radical United Irishmen, leading Patrick to distance himself from the name Prunty. Having obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree, he was ordained on 10 August 1806. He is the author of "Cottage Poems" (1811), "The Rural Minstrel" (1814), numerous pamphlets, several newspaper articles, and various rural poems.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1811, Patrick was appointed minister at Hartshead cum Clifton. In 1812, he met and married 29 year old Maria Branwell at Guiseley. In 1813, they moved to Clough House Hightown, Liversedge, West Riding of Yorkshire and by 1820 they had moved into the parsonage at Haworth, where he took up the post of perpetual curate. (Haworth was an ancient chapelry in the large parish of Bradford, so he could not be rector or vicar.) They had six children. On the death of his wife in 1821, his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Branwell, came from Penzance, Cornwall, to help him bring up the children. Open, intelligent, generous, and dedicated to educating his children personally, he bought all the books and toys the children desired. He also accorded them great freedom and unconditional love, although he may have alienated them from the world due to his eccentric personal habits and peculiar theories of education.


title: Brontë family

text: After several failed attempts to remarry, Patrick accepted permanent widowerhood at the age of 47, and spent his time visiting the sick and the poor, giving sermons and administering communion. In so doing, he would often leave his children Maria, Elizabeth, Emily, Charlotte, Branwell and Anne alone with Elizabeth - Aunt Branwell and a maid, Tabitha Aykroyd (Tabby). Tabby helped relieve their possible boredom and loneliness especially by recounting local legends in her Yorkshire dialect as she tirelessly prepared the family’s meals. Eventually, Patrick would survive his entire family. Six years after Charlotte's death, he died in 1861 at the age of 84. His son-in-law, the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, would aid Mr Brontë at the end of his life as well.


title: Brontë family

text: Patrick's wife Maria Brontë, née Branwell, (15 April 1783 – 15 September 1821), was born in Penzance, Cornwall, and came from a comfortably well off, middle-class family. Her father had a flourishing tea and grocery store and had accumulated considerable wealth. Maria died at the age of 38 of uterine cancer. She married the same day as her younger sister Charlotte in the church at Guiseley after her fiancé had celebrated the union of two other couples. She was a literate and pious woman, known for her lively spirit, joyfulness, and tenderness, and it was she who designed the samplers that are on display in the museum and had them embroidered by her children. She left memories with her husband and with Charlotte, the oldest surviving sibling, of a very vivacious woman. The younger ones, particularly Emily and Anne, admitted to retaining only vague images of their mother, especially of her suffering on her sickbed.


title: Brontë family

text: Elizabeth Branwell (2 December 1776 – 29 October 1842) arrived from Penzance in 1821, aged 45, after the death of Maria, her younger sister, to help Patrick look after the children, and was known as 'Aunt Branwell'. Elizabeth Branwell, who raised the children after the death of their mother, was a Methodist. It seems, nevertheless, that her denomination did not exert any influence on the children. It was Aunt Branwell who taught the children arithmetic, the alphabet, how to sew, embroider and cross-stitch, skills appropriate for ladies. Aunt Branwell also gave them books and subscribed to "Fraser's Magazine", less interesting than "Blackwood's", but, nevertheless, providing plenty of material for discussion. She was a generous person who dedicated her life to her nieces and nephew, neither marrying nor returning to visit her relations in Cornwall. She died of bowel obstruction in October 1842, after a brief agony: she was comforted by her beloved nephew Branwell. In her last will, Aunt Branwell left to her three nieces the considerable sum of £900 (about £95,700 in 2017 currency), which allowed them to resign their low-paid jobs as governesses and teachers.


title: Brontë family

text: Maria (1814–1825), the eldest, was born in Clough House, Hightown, Liversedge, West Yorkshire, on 23 April 1814. She suffered from hunger, cold, and privation at Cowan Bridge School. Charlotte described her as very lively, very sensitive, and particularly advanced in her reading. She returned from school with an advanced case of tuberculosis and died at Haworth at the age of 11 on 6 May 1825.


title: Brontë family

text: Elizabeth (1815–1825), the second child, joined her sister Maria at Cowan Bridge where she suffered the same fate. Elizabeth was less vivacious than her brother and her sisters and apparently less advanced for her age. She died on 15 June 1825 at the age of 10, within two weeks of returning home to her father.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte (1816–1855), born in Market Street Thornton, near Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 21 April 1816, was a poet and novelist and is the author of "Jane Eyre", her best known work, and three other novels. She died on 31 March 1855 just before reaching the age of 39.


title: Brontë family

text: Patrick Branwell (1817–1848) was born in Market Street Thornton on 26 June 1817. Known as "Branwell", he was a painter, writer and casual worker. He became addicted to alcohol and laudanum and died at Haworth on 24 September 1848 at the age of 31.


title: Brontë family

text: Emily Jane (1818–1848), born in Market Street Thornton, 30 July 1818, was a poet and novelist. She died in Haworth on 19 December 1848 at the age of 30. "Wuthering Heights" was her only novel.


title: Brontë family

text: Anne (1820–1849), born in Market Street Thornton on 17 January 1820, was a poet and novelist. She wrote a largely autobiographical novel entitled "Agnes Grey", but her second novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848), was far more ambitious. She died on 28 May 1849 in Scarborough at the age of 29.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1824, the four eldest girls (excluding Anne) entered the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, which educated the children of less prosperous members of the clergy, and had been recommended to Mr Brontë. The following year, Maria and Elizabeth fell gravely ill and were removed from the school, but died on 6 May and 15 June 1825, respectively. Charlotte and Emily were also withdrawn from the school and returned to Haworth. Charlotte expressed the traumatic impact that her sisters’ deaths had on her in her future works. In "Jane Eyre", Cowan Bridge became Lowood, Maria inspired the young Helen Burns, the cruel mistress Miss Andrews inspired the headmistress Miss Scatcherd, and the tyrannical headmaster Rev. Carus Wilson, Mr Brocklehurst.


title: Brontë family

text: Tuberculosis, which afflicted Maria and Elizabeth in 1825, also caused the eventual deaths of three of the surviving Brontës: Branwell in September 1848, Emily in December 1848, and, finally, Anne in May 1849.


title: Brontë family

text: Patrick Brontë faced a challenge in arranging for the education of the girls of his family, which was barely middle class. They lacked significant connections and he could not afford the fees for them to attend an established school for young ladies. One solution was the schools where the fees were reduced to a minimum – so called "charity schools" – with a mission to assist families like those of the lower clergy. One cannot accuse Mr. Brontë of not having done everything possible to find a solution that he thought would be best for his daughters.


title: Brontë family

text: (Barker had read in the "Leeds Intelligencer" of 6 November 1823 reports of cases in the Court of Commons in Bowes: he later read of other cases, of 24 November 1824 near Richmond, in the county of Yorkshire, where pupils had been discovered gnawed by rats and suffering so badly from malnutrition that some of them had lost their sight. ) Yet for Patrick, there was nothing to suggest that the Reverend Carus Wilson's Clergy Daughters' School would not provide a good education and good care for his daughters. The school was not expensive and its patrons (supporters who allowed the school to use their names) were all respected people. Among these was the daughter of Hannah More, a religious author and philanthropist who took a particular interest in education. Mrs More was a close friend of the poet William Cowper, who, like her, advocated extensive, proper, and well-rounded education for young girls. The pupils included the offspring of different prelates and even certain acquaintances of Patrick Brontë including William Wilberforce, young women whose fathers had also been educated at St John's College, Cambridge. Thus Brontë believed Wilson's school to have many of the necessary guarantees needed for his daughters to receive proper schooling.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1829–30, Patrick Brontë engaged John Bradley, an artist from neighbouring Keighley, as drawing-master for the children. Bradley was an artist of some local repute rather than a professional instructor, but he may well have fostered Branwell's enthusiasm for art and architecture.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1831, 14-year-old Charlotte was enrolled at the school of Miss Wooler in Roe Head, Mirfield. Patrick could have sent his daughter to a less costly school in Keighley nearer home but Miss Wooler and her sisters had a good reputation and he remembered the building, which he passed when strolling around the parishes of Kirklees, Dewsbury, and Hartshead-cum-Clifton where he was vicar. Margaret Wooler showed fondness towards the sisters and she accompanied Charlotte to the altar at her marriage. Patrick's choice of school was excellent – Charlotte was happy there and studied well. She made many lifelong friends, in particular Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor who later went to New Zealand before returning to England. Charlotte returned from Roe Head in June 1832, missing her friends, but happy to rejoin her family.


title: Brontë family

text: Three years later, Miss Wooler offered her former pupil a position as her assistant. The family decided that Emily would accompany her to pursue studies that would otherwise have been unaffordable. Emily's fees were partly covered by Charlotte's salary. Emily was 17 and it was the first time she had left Haworth since leaving Cowan Bridge. On 29 July 1835, the sisters left for Roe Head. The same day, Branwell wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Art in London, to present several of his drawings as part of his candidature as a probationary student.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte taught, and wrote about her students without much sympathy. Emily did not settle: after three months her health seemed to decline and she had to be taken home to the parsonage. Anne took her place and stayed until Christmas 1837.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte avoided boredom by following the developments of the imaginary Empire of Angria - invented by Charlotte and Bramwell - that she received in letters from her brother. During holidays at Haworth, she wrote long narratives while being reproached by her father who wanted her to become more involved in parish affairs. These were coming to a head over the imposition of the Church of England rates, a local tax levied on parishes where the majority of the population were dissenters. In the meantime, Miss Wooler moved to Heald's House, at Dewsbury Moor, where Charlotte complained about the humidity that made her unwell. Upon leaving the establishment in 1838 Miss Wooler presented her with a parting gift of "The Vision of Don Roderick and Rokeby", a collection of poems by Walter Scott.


title: Brontë family

text: The children became interested in writing from an early age, initially as a game. They all displayed a talent for narrative, but for the younger ones it became a pastime to develop them. At the centre of the children's creativity were twelve wooden soldiers which Patrick Brontë gave to Branwell at the beginning of June 1826. These toy soldiers instantly fired their imaginations and they spoke of them as "the Young Men", and gave them names. However, it was not until December 1827 that their ideas took written form, and the imaginary African kingdom of Glass Town came into existence, followed by the Empire of Angria. Emily and Anne created Gondal, an island continent in the North Pacific, ruled by a woman, after the departure of Charlotte in 1831. In the beginning, these stories were written in "little books", the size of a matchbox and cursorily bound with thread. The pages were filled with close, minute writing, often in capital letters without punctuation and embellished with illustrations, detailed maps, schemes, landscapes, and plans of buildings, created by the children according to their specialisations. The idea was that the books were of a size for the soldiers to read. The complexity of the stories matured as the children's imaginations developed, fed by reading the three weekly or monthly magazines to which their father had subscribed, or the newspapers that were bought daily from John Greenwood's local news and stationery store.


title: Brontë family

text: These fictional worlds were the product of fertile imagination fed by reading, discussion, and a passion for literature. Far from suffering from the negative influences that never left them and which were reflected in the works of their later, more mature years, the Brontë children absorbed them with open arms.


title: Brontë family

text: The periodicals that Patrick Brontë read were a mine of information for his children. The "Leeds Intelligencer" and "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine", conservative and well written, but better than the "Quarterly Review" that defended the same political ideas whilst addressing a less refined readership (the reason Mr. Brontë did not read it), were exploited in every detail. "Blackwood's Magazine" in particular, was not only the source of their knowledge of world affairs, but also provided material for the Brontës' early writing. For instance, an article in the June 1826 number of "Blackwood’s", provides commentary on new discoveries from the exploration of central Africa. The map included with the article highlights geographical features the Brontës reference in their tales: the Jibbel Kumera (the Mountains of the Moon), Ashantee, and the rivers Niger and Calabar. The author also advises the British to expand into Africa from Fernando Po, where, Christine Alexander notes, the Brontë children locate the Great Glass Town. Their knowledge of geography was completed by Goldsmith's "Grammar of General Geography", which the Brontës owned and annotated heavily.


title: Brontë family

text: From 1833, Charlotte and Branwell's Angrian tales begin to feature Byronic heroes who have a strong sexual magnetism and passionate spirit, and demonstrate arrogance and even black-heartedness. Again, it is in an article in "Blackwood's Magazine" from August 1825 that they discover the poet for the first time; he had died the previous year. From this moment, the name Byron became synonymous with all the prohibitions and audacities as if it had stirred up the very essence of the rise of those forbidden things. Branwell's Charlotte Zamorna, one of the heroes of "Verdopolis", tends towards increasingly ambiguous behaviour, and the same influence and evolution recur with the Brontës, especially in the characters of Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights", and Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre", who display the traits of a Byronic hero. Numerous other works left their mark on the Brontës—the "Thousand and One Nights" for example, which inspired jinn in which they became themselves in the centre of their kingdoms, while adding a touch of exoticism.


title: Brontë family

text: The children's imagination was also influenced by three prints of engravings in mezzotint by John Martin around 1820. Charlotte and Branwell made copies of the prints "Belshazzar's Feast", "Déluge", and "Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon" (1816), which hung on the walls of the parsonage.


title: Brontë family

text: Martin's fantastic architecture is reflected in the Glass Town and Angrian writings, where he appears himself among Branwell's characters and under the name of Edward de Lisle, the greatest painter and portraitist of Verdopolis, the capital of Glass Town. One of Sir Edward de Lisle's major works, "Les Quatre Genii en Conseil", is inspired by Martin's illustration for John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Together with Byron, John Martin seems to have been one of the artistic influences essential to the Brontës' universe.


title: Brontë family

text: The influence revealed by "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is much less clear. Anne's works are largely founded on her experience as a governess and on that of her brother's decline. Furthermore, they demonstrate her conviction, a legacy from her father, that books should provide moral education. This sense of moral duty and the need to record it, are more evident in "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". The influence of the gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, Gregory "Monk" Lewis and Charles Maturin is noticeable, and that of Walter Scott too, if only because the heroine, abandoned and left alone, resists importunities not only through her almost supernatural talents, but by her powerful temperament.


title: Brontë family

text: "Jane Eyre", "Agnes Grey", "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", "Shirley", "Villette" and even "The Professor" present a linear structure concerning characters who advance through life after several trials and tribulations, to find a kind of happiness in love and virtue, recalling works of religious inspiration of the 17th century such as John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" or his "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners". In a more profane manner, the hero or heroine follows a picaresque itinerary such as in Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), Henry Fielding (1707–1764) and Tobias Smollett (1721–1771). This lively tradition continued into the 19th century with the "rags to riches" genre to which almost all the great Victorian romancers have contributed. The protagonist is thrown by fate into poverty and after many difficulties achieves a golden happiness. Often an artifice is employed to effect the passage from one state to another such as an unexpected inheritance, a miraculous gift, grand reunions, etc, and in a sense it is the route followed by Charlotte's and Anne's protagonists, even if the riches they win are more those of the heart than of the wallet. Apart from its Gothic elements, "Wuthering Heights" moves like a Greek tragedy and possesses its music, the cosmic dimensions of the epics of John Milton, and the power of the Shakespearian theatre. One can hear the echoes of "King Lear" as well as the completely different characters of "Romeo and Juliet". The Brontës were also seduced by the writings of Walter Scott, and in 1834 Charlotte exclaimed, "For fiction, read Walter Scott and only him – all novels after his are without value."


title: Brontë family

text: Through their father's influence and their own intellectual curiosity, they were able to benefit from an education that placed them among knowledgeable people, but Mr Brontë's emoluments were modest. The only options open to the girls were either marriage or a choice between the professions of school mistress or governess. The Brontë sisters found positions in families wherein they educated often rebellious young children, or found employment as school teachers. The possibility of becoming a paid companion to a rich and solitary woman might have been a fall-back role but one that would have probably bored any of the sisters intolerably. Janet Todd's "Mary Wollstonecraft, a revolutionary life" mentions the predicament.


title: Brontë family

text: Only Emily never became a governess. Her sole professional experience would be an experiment in teaching during six months of intolerable exile in Miss Patchett's school at Law Hill (between Haworth and Halifax). In contrast, Charlotte had teaching positions at Miss Margaret Wooler's school and in Brussels with the Hégers. She became governess to the Sidgwicks, the Stonegappes, and the Lotherdales where she worked for several months in 1839, then with Mrs White, at Upperhouse House, Rawdon, from March to September 1841. Anne became a governess and worked for Mrs Ingham, at Blake Hall, Mirfield from April to December 1839, then for Mrs Robinson at Thorp Green Hall, Little Ouseburn, near York, where she also obtained employment for her brother in a futile attempt to stabilise him.


title: Brontë family

text: The family's finances did not flourish, and Aunt Branwell spent the money with caution. Emily had a visceral need of her home and the countryside that surrounded it, and to leave it would cause her to languish and wither. Charlotte and Anne, being more realistic, did not hesitate in finding work and from April 1839 to December 1841 the two sisters had several posts as governesses. Not staying long with each family, their employment would last for some months or a single season. However, Anne did stay with the Robinsons in Thorp Green where things went well, from May 1840 to June 1845.


title: Brontë family

text: In the meantime, Charlotte had an idea that would place all the advantages on her side. On advice from her father and friends, she thought that she and her sisters had the intellectual capacity to create a school for young girls in the parsonage where their Sunday School classes took place. It was agreed to offer the future pupils the opportunity of correctly learning modern languages and that preparation for this should be done abroad, which led to a further decision. Among the possibilities, Paris and Lille were considered, but were rejected due to aversion to the French. Indeed, the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars had not been forgotten by the Tory-spirited and deeply conservative girls. On the recommendation of a pastor based in Brussels, who wanted to be of help, Belgium was chosen, where they could also study German, and music. Aunt Branwell provided the funds for the Brussels project.


title: Brontë family

text: Emily and Charlotte arrived in Brussels in February 1842 accompanied by their father. Once there, they enrolled at Monsieur and Madame Héger's boarding school in the Rue d'Isabelle, for six months. Claire Héger was the second wife of Constantin, and it was she who founded and directed the school while Constantin had the responsibility for the higher French classes. According to Miss Wheelwright, a former pupil, he had the intellect of a genius. He was passionate about his auditorium, demanding many lectures, perspectives, and structured analyses. He was also a good-looking man with regular features, bushy hair, very black whiskers, and wore an excited expression while sounding forth on great authors about whom he invited his students to make a pastiche on general or philosophical themes.


title: Brontë family

text: The lessons, especially those of Constantin Héger, were very much appreciated by Charlotte, and the two sisters showed exceptional intelligence, although Emily hardly liked her teacher and was somewhat rebellious. Emily learned German and to play the piano with natural brilliance and very quickly the two sisters were writing literary and philosophical essays in an advanced level of French. After six months of study, Mme Héger suggested they stay at the boarding school free of charge, in return for giving some lessons. After much hesitation, the girls accepted. Neither of them felt particularly attached to their students, and only one, Mademoiselle de Bassompierre, then aged 16, later expressed any affection for her teacher Emily, which appeared to be mutual, and made her a gift of a signed, detailed drawing of a storm ravaged pine tree.


title: Brontë family

text: The death of their aunt in October of the same year forced them to return once more to Haworth. Aunt Branwell had left all her worldly goods in equal shares to her nieces and to Eliza Kingston, a cousin in Penzance, which had the immediate effect of purging all their debts and providing a small reserve of funds. Nevertheless, they were asked to return to the Heger's boarding school in Brussels as they were regarded as being competent and were needed. They were each offered teaching posts in the boarding school, English for Charlotte and music for Emily. However, Charlotte returned alone to Belgium in January 1843. Emily remained critical of Monsieur Heger, in spite of the excellent opinion he held of her. He later stated that she 'had the spirit of a man', and would probably become a great traveller due to her being gifted with a superior faculty of reason that allowed her to deduce ancient knowledge from new spheres of knowledge, and her unbending willpower would have triumphed over all obstacles.


title: Brontë family

text: Almost a year to the day, enamoured for some time for Monsieur Héger, Charlotte resigned and returned to Haworth. Her life at the school had not been without suffering, and on one occasion she ventured into the cathedral and entered a confessional. She may have had intention of converting to Catholicism, but it would only have been for a short time. During her absence, life at Haworth had become more difficult. Mr. Brontë had lost his sight although his cataract had been operated on with success in Manchester, and it was there in August 1846, when Charlotte arrived at his bedside that she began to write "Jane Eyre". Meanwhile, her brother Branwell fell into a rapid decline punctuated by dramas, drunkenness, and delirium. Due partly to Branwell's poor reputation, the school project failed and was abandoned.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte wrote four long, very personal, and sometimes vague letters to Monsieur Héger that never received replies. The extent of Charlotte Brontë's feelings for Héger were not fully realised until 1913, when her letters to him were published for the first time. Héger had first shown them to Mrs. Gaskell when she visited him in 1856 while researching her biography "The Life of Charlotte Brontë", but she concealed their true significance. These letters, referred to as the "Héger Letters", had been ripped up at some stage by Héger, but his wife had retrieved the pieces from the wastepaper bin and meticulously glued or sewn them back together. Paul Héger, Constantin's son, and his sisters gave these letters to the British Museum, and they were shortly thereafter printed in "The Times" newspaper.


title: Brontë family

text: The writing that had begun so early never left the family. Charlotte had ambition like her brother, and wrote to the poet laureate Robert Southey to submit several poems in his style (though Branwell was kept at a distance from her project). She received a hardly encouraging reply after several months. Southey, still illustrious today although his star has somewhat waned, was one of the great figures of English Romanticism, along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and he shared the prejudice of the times; literature, or more particularly poetry (for women had been publishing fiction and enjoying critical, popular and economic success for over a century by this time), was considered a man's business, and not an appropriate occupation for ladies.


title: Brontë family

text: However, Charlotte did not allow herself to be discouraged. Furthermore, coincidence came to her aid. One day in autumn 1845 while alone in the dining room she noticed a small notebook lying open in the drawer of Emily's portable writing desk and "of my sister Emily's handwriting". She read it and was dazzled by the beauty of the poems that she did not know. The discovery of this treasure was what she recalled five years later, and according to Juliet Barker, she erased the excitement that she had felt "more than surprise ..., a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had a peculiar music – wild, melancholy, and elevating." In the following paragraph Charlotte describes her sister's indignant reaction at her having ventured into such an intimate realm with impunity. It took Emily hours to calm down and days to be convinced to publish the poems.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte envisaged a joint publication by the three sisters. Anne was easily won over to the project, and the work was shared, compared, and edited. Once the poems had been chosen, nineteen for Charlotte and twenty-one each for Anne and Emily, Charlotte went about searching for a publisher. She took advice from William and Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, directors of one of their favourite magazines, "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal". It is thought, although no documents exist to support the claim, that they advised the sisters to contact Aylott & Jones, a small publishing house at 8, Paternoster Row, London, who accepted, but at the authors' own risk since they felt the commercial risk to the company was too great. The work thus appeared in 1846, published using the male pseudonyms of Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily), and Acton (Anne) Bell. These were very uncommon forenames but the initials of each of the sisters were preserved and the patronym could have been inspired by that of the vicar of the parish, Arthur Bell Nicholls. It was in fact on 18 May 1845 that he took up his duties at Haworth, at the moment when the publication project was well advanced.


title: Brontë family

text: The book attracted hardly any attention. Only three copies were sold, of which one was purchased by Fredrick Enoch, a resident of Cornmarket, Warwick, who in admiration, wrote to the publisher to request an autograph – the only extant single document carrying the three authors' signatures in their pseudonyms, and they continued creating their prose, each one producing a book a year later. Each worked in secret, unceasingly discussing their writing for hours at the dinner table, after which their father would open the door at 9 p.m. with "Don't stay up late, girls!", then rewinding the clock and taking the stairs to his room upstairs.


title: Brontë family

text: Charlotte's "Jane Eyre", Emily's "Wuthering Heights", and Anne's "Agnes Grey", appeared in 1847 after many tribulations, again for reasons of finding a publisher. The packets containing the manuscripts were often returned to the parsonage and Charlotte simply added a new address; she did this at least a dozen times during the year. The first one was finally published by Smith, Elder & Co in London. The 23-year-old owner, George Smith, had specialised in publishing scientific revues, aided by his perspicacious reader William Smith Williams. Emily and Anne's manuscripts were confided to Thomas Cautley Newby, who intended to compile a "three-decker"; more economical for sale and for loan in the "circulating libraries". The two first volumes included "Wuthering Heights" and the third one "Agnes Grey". Both novels attracted critical acclaim, occasionally harsh about "Wuthering Heights", praised for the originality of the subject and its narrative style, but viewed with suspicion because of its outrageous violence and immorality – surely, the critics wrote, a work of a man with a depraved mind. Critics were fairly neutral about "Agnes Grey", but more flattering for "Jane Eyre", which soon became a best-seller, despite some commentators denouncing it as an affront to good morals.


title: Brontë family

text: The pseudonymous (Currer Bell) publication in 1847 of "Jane Eyre, An Autobiography" established a dazzling reputation for Charlotte. In July 1848, Charlotte and Anne (Emily had refused to go along with them) travelled by train to London to prove to Smith, Elder & Co. that each sister was indeed an independent author, for Thomas Cautley Newby, the publisher of "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey", had launched a rumour that the three novels were the work of one author, understood to be Ellis Bell (Emily). George Smith was extremely surprised to find two gawky, ill-dressed country girls paralysed with fear, who, to identify themselves, held out the letters addressed to "Messrs. Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell". Taken by such surprise, he introduced them to his mother with all the dignity their talent merited, and invited them to the opera for a performance of Rossini's "Barber of Seville".


title: Brontë family

text: Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was published in 1847 under the masculine pseudonym Ellis Bell, by Thomas Cautley Newby, in two companion volumes to that of Anne's (Acton Bell), "Agnes Grey." Controversial from the start of its release, its originality, its subject, narrative style and troubled action raised intrigue. Certain critics condemned it, but sales were nevertheless considerable for an unknown author of a novel that defied all conventions.


title: Brontë family

text: It is a work of black Romanticism, covering three generations isolated in the cold spring of the countryside with two opposing elements: the dignified manor of Thrushcross Grange and the rambling dilapidated pile of Wuthering Heights. The main characters, swept by tumults of the earth, the skies and the hearts, are strange and often possessed of unheard-of violence and deprivations. The story is told in a scholarly fashion, with two narrators, the traveller and tenant Lockwood, and the housekeeper/governess, Nelly Dean, with two sections in the first person, one direct, one cloaked, which overlap each other with digressions and sub-plots that form, from apparently scattered fragments, a coherently locked unit.


title: Brontë family

text: One year before her death in May 1849, Anne published a second novel. Far more ambitious than her previous novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" was a great success and rapidly outsold Emily's "Wuthering Heights". However, the critical reception was mixed — praise for the novel's "power" and "effect" and sharp criticism for being "coarse". Charlotte Brontë herself, Anne's sister, wrote to her publisher that it "hardly seems to me desirable to choice of subject in that work is a mistake." After Anne's death, Charlotte prevented the novel's republication and thus condemned her sister to temporary oblivion.


title: Brontë family

text: The master theme is the alcoholism of a man who causes the downfall of his family. Helen Graham, the central character, gets married for love to Arthur Huntingdon, whom she soon discovers to be lecherous, violent, and alcoholic. She is forced to break with the conventions that would keep her in the family home that has become hell, and to leave with her child to seek secret refuge in the old house of Wildfell Hall. When the alcohol causes her husband's ultimate decline, she returns to care for him in total abnegation until his death.


title: Brontë family

text: Today, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is considered by most of the critics to be one of the first sustained feminist novels.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1850, a little over a year after the deaths of Emily and Anne, Charlotte wrote a preface for the re-print of the combined edition of "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey", in which she publicly revealed the real identities of all three sisters.


title: Brontë family

text: Conditions at the school at Cowan Bridge, where Maria and Elizabeth may have contracted the tuberculosis from which they died, were probably no worse than those at many other schools of the time. (For example, several decades before the Brontë sisters' experience at Cowan Bridge, Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra contracted typhus at a similar boarding school, and Jane nearly died. The Austen sisters' education, like that of the Brontë sisters, was continued at home.) Nevertheless, Charlotte blamed Cowan Bridge for her sisters' deaths, especially its poor medical care – chiefly, repeated emetics and blood-lettings – and the negligence of the school's doctor – who was the director's brother-in-law. Charlotte's vivid memories of the privations at Cowan Bridge were poured into her depiction of Lowood School in "Jane Eyre": the scanty and often spoiled food, the lack of heating and adequate clothing, the periodic epidemics of illness such as "low fever" (probably typhus), the severity and arbitrariness of the punishments, and even the harshness of particular teachers (a Miss Andrews who taught at Cowan Bridge is thought to have been Charlotte's model for Miss Scatcherd in "Jane Eyre"). Elizabeth Gaskell, a personal friend and the first biographer of Charlotte, confirmed that Cowan Bridge was Charlotte's model for Lowood and insisted that conditions there in Charlotte's day were egregious. More recent biographers have argued that the food, clothing, heating, medical care, and discipline at Cowan Bridge were not considered sub-standard for religious schools of the time, testiments of the era's complacency about these intolerable conditions. One scholar has commended Patrick Brontë for his perspicacity in removing all his daughters from the school, a few weeks before the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth.


title: Brontë family

text: Following the overwhelming success of "Jane Eyre", Charlotte was pressured by George Smith, her publisher, to travel to London to meet her public. Despite the extreme timidity that paralysed her among strangers and made her almost incapable of expressing herself, Charlotte consented to be lionised, and in London was introduced to other great writers of the era, including Harriet Martineau and William Makepeace Thackeray, both of whom befriended her. Charlotte especially admired Thackeray, whose portrait, given to her by Smith, still hangs in the dining room at Haworth parsonage. On one occasion during a public gathering, Thackeray introduced Charlotte to his mother as "Jane Eyre" and when Charlotte called on him the next day, he received an extended dressing-down, in which Smith had to intervene.


title: Brontë family

text: During her trip to London in 1851 she visited the Great Exhibition and The Crystal Palace. In 1849 she published "Shirley" and in 1853 "Villette".


title: Brontë family

text: The Brontë sisters were highly amused by the behaviour of the curates they met. Arthur Bell Nicholls (1818–1906) had been curate of Haworth for seven and a half years, when contrary to all expectations, and to the fury of Patrick Brontë (their father), he proposed to Charlotte. Although impressed by his dignity and deep voice, as well as by his near complete emotional collapse when she rejected him, she found him rigid, conventional, and rather narrow-minded "like all the curates" – as she wrote to Ellen Nussey. After she declined his proposal, Nicholls, pursued by the anger of Patrick Brontë, left his functions for several months. However, little by little her feelings evolved and after slowly convincing her father, she finally married Nicholls on 29 June 1854.


title: Brontë family

text: On return from their honeymoon in Ireland where she had been introduced to Mr. Nicholls' aunt and cousins, her life completely changed. She adopted her new duties as a wife, which took up most of her time. She wrote to her friends telling them that Nicholls was a good and attentive husband, but that she nevertheless felt a kind of holy terror at her new situation. In a letter to Ellen Nussey (Nell), in 1854 she wrote "Indeed-indeed-Nell-it is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife."


title: Brontë family

text: The following year she died aged 38. The cause of death given at the time was tuberculosis, but it may have been complicated with typhoid fever (the water at Haworth being likely contaminated due to poor sanitation and the vast cemetery that surrounded the church and the parsonage) and hyperemesis gravidarum from her pregnancy that was in its early stage.


title: Brontë family

text: The first biography of Charlotte was written by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell at the request of Patrick Brontë, and published in 1857, helping to create the myth of a family of condemned genius, living in a painful and romantic solitude. After having stayed at Haworth several times and having accommodated Charlotte in Plymouth Grove, Manchester, and having become her friend and confidant, Mrs Gaskell certainly had the advantage of knowing the family.


title: Brontë family

text: These are outlines or unedited roughcasts which with the exception of "Emma" have been recently published.


title: Brontë family

text: Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817–1848) was considered by his father and sisters to be a genius, while the book by Daphne du Maurier (1986), "The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë", contains numerous references to his addiction to alcohol and laudanum. He was an intelligent boy with many talents and interested in many subjects, especially literature. He was often the driving force in the Brontë siblings' construction of the imaginary worlds. He was artistic and was encouraged by his father to pursue this.


title: Brontë family

text: While trying to make a name as an artist, he left for London, but used up his father's allowance in a matter of days in cafés of ill-repute. His attempts to obtain low-paid work failed, and very quickly he foundered in alcohol and laudanum, unable to regain his stability.


title: Brontë family

text: Anne Brontë obtained employment for him in January 1843, but nearly three years later he was dismissed. In September 1848, after several years of decline, he died from tuberculosis. On his death, his father tearfully repeated, "My brilliant boy", while the clearheaded and totally loyal Emily wrote that his condition had been "hopeless".


title: Brontë family

text: Branwell is the author of "Juvenilia", which he wrote as a child with his sister Charlotte, "Glass Town", "Angria", poems, pieces of prose and verse under the pseudonym of Northangerland, such as "Real Rest", published by the "Halifax Guardian" (8 November 1846) from several articles accepted by local newspapers and from an unfinished novel probably from around 1845 entitled "And the Weary are at Rest".


title: Brontë family

text: Emily Brontë (1818–1848) has been called the "Sphinx of Literature", writing without the slightest desire for fame and only for her own satisfaction. She was obsessively timid outside the family circle, to the point of turning her back on her partners in conversation without saying a word.


title: Brontë family

text: With a single novel, "Wuthering Heights" (1847), and poems with an elemental power, she reached the heights of literature. Though she was almost unknown during her life, posterity classes her as "top level" in the literary canon of English literature. Simone de Beauvoir, in "The Second Sex" (1949), chooses only Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf and ("sometimes") Mary Webb, Colette and Mansfield, as among those who have tried to approach nature "in its inhuman freedom".


title: Brontë family

text: Above all, Emily loved to wander about the wild landscape of the moors around Haworth. In September 1848 her health began to decline rapidly. Consumptive, she refused all treatment, with the exception of a visit from a London doctor, because although it was already too late, her relatives insisted. Despite popular belief, Emily did not die on the dining room sofa. There is no contemporary evidence for the story and Charlotte, in her letter to William Smith Williams, mentions Emily's dog Keeper lying at the side of her death bed. It is possible that she left an unfinished manuscript that Charlotte burned to avoid such controversy as followed the publication of "Wuthering Heights". Several documents exist that allude to the possibility, although no proof corroborating this suggestion has ever been found.


title: Brontë family

text: Emily's poems were probably written to be inserted in the saga of "Gondal", several of whose characters she identified with right into adulthood. At the age of 28 she still acted out scenes from the little books with Anne while travelling on the train to York. "Remembrance" was one of the 21 of her poems that were chosen for 1846 joint publication with her siblings'.


title: Brontë family

text: Anne was not as celebrated as her other two sisters. Her second novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", was prevented from being republished after Anne's death by her sister Charlotte, who wrote to her publisher that "it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." This prevention is considered to be the main reason for Anne's being less renowned than her sisters.


title: Brontë family

text: Anne's health began to decline rapidly, like that of her brother and sister some months earlier. On 5 April 1849, she wrote to Ellen Nussey asking her to accompany her to Scarborough on the east coast. Anne confides her thoughts to Ellen:


title: Brontë family

text: Anne hoped that the sea air would improve her health, as recommended by the doctor, and Charlotte agreed to go.


title: Brontë family

text: On the Sunday morning she felt weaker and asked if she could be taken back to Haworth. The doctor confirmed that she was near to death and Anne thanked him for his candour. "Take courage, take courage" she murmured to Charlotte. She died at 2 pm on Monday 28 May. She is buried in the cemetery of St Mary's of Scarborough. Her gravestone inscription carried an error in her age: she died at the age of 29 and not at 28. It was noticed by Charlotte during her only visit, and she had the intention of asking the mason to correct it. Ill health did not leave him time to effect the repair and the tombstone remained in the same state until it was replaced by the Brontë Society in April 2013.


title: Brontë family

text: In her 1857 biography "The Life of Charlotte Brontë", Mrs Gaskell begins with two explanatory and descriptive chapters. The first one covers the wild countryside of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the little village of Haworth, the parsonage and the church surrounded by its vast cemetery perched on the top of a hill. The second chapter presents an overview of the social, sanitary, and economic conditions of the region.


title: Brontë family

text: The death toll within the Brontë family was not unusual for area, and left little impression on the village population, who were confronted with death on a daily basis. When Patrick Brontë arrived, the parish was suffering from unemployment. The men sought work in the quarries and local handicrafts. The only businesses were the pharmacy, which supplied Branwell, and John Greenwood's stationery store where the Brontës were the best customers.


title: Brontë family

text: Haworth's population grew rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, from hardly 1,000 to 3,365 in 50 years. The village did not have a sewage system and the well water was contaminated by faecal matter and the decomposition of bodies in the cemetery on the hilltop. Life expectancy was less than 25 years and infant mortality was around 41% for children under six months of age. Most of the population lived by working the poorly fertile land of the moors and supplemented their incomes with work done at home, such as spinning and weaving wool from the sheep that were farmed on the moors. Conditions changed when the textile industry, already present since the end of the 17th century, grew with the mills being located on the banks of the River Worth, whose waters turned the wheels. Consequently fewer people were needed to work them.


title: Brontë family

text: Food was scarce, often little more than porridge, resulting in vitamin deficiencies. Public hygiene was non-existent and lavatories were basic. The facilities at the parsonage were no more than a plank across a hole in a hut at the rear, with a lower plank for the children. In her thirties, Charlotte was described as having a toothless jaw by such persons as Mrs Gaskell, who stated in a letter dated 25 August 1850 to Catherine Winkworth: "large mouth and many teeth gone". However, food was reasonably plentiful in the family. They ate from well filled plates of porridge in the morning and piles of potatoes were peeled each day in the kitchen while Tabby told stories about her country, or Emily revised her German grammar. Sometimes Mr Brontë would return home from his tours of the village with game donated by the parishioners.


title: Brontë family

text: According to Robert Southey, poet laureate, in his response to Charlotte, ladies from a good background should be content with an education and a marriage embellished with some decorative talents. Mr Patrick Brontë had one of the characters in his "The Maid of Kilarney -" without knowing whether it reflected a widespread opinion supporting or condemning it - say, "The education of female ought, most assuredly, to be competent, in order that she might enjoy herself, and be a fit companion for man. But, believe me, lovely, delicate and sprightly woman, is not formed by nature, to pore over the musty pages of Grecian and Roman literature, or to plod through the windings of Mathematical Problems, nor has Providence assigned for her sphere of action, either the cabinet or the field. Her "forte" is softness, tenderness and grace." In any case, it seemed to contradict his attitude towards his daughters whom he encouraged, even if he was not completely aware of what they did with their time.


title: Brontë family

text: Due to their forced or voluntary isolation, the Brontë sisters constituted a separate literary group that neither had predecessors nor successors. There is not a 'Brontë' line such as exists among authors of realist and naturalist novels, or in poetry, the romantic, and the symbolic.


title: Brontë family

text: Their influence certainly existed, but it is difficult to define in its totality. Writers who followed them doubtlessly thought about them while they were creating their dark and tormented worlds such as Thomas Hardy in "Jude the Obscure" or "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", or George Eliot with "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss". There were also more conventional authors such as Matthew Arnold, who in a letter from 1853 says of Charlotte that she only pretends to heartlessness: "nothing but hunger, rebellion and rage". In contrast, Mrs Humphry Ward, author of "Robert Elsmere" and other morality novels, only finds the didactic among the works of Charlotte, while she appreciates the happy blend of romance and realism in the works of Emily. There is however nothing that could constitute a literary vein.


title: Brontë family

text: By 1860 Charlotte had been dead for five years, and the only people living at the parsonage were Mr. Brontë, his son-in-law, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and two servants. In 1857 Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte was published, and though at its first reading, Mr. Brontë approved of its commissioning, several months later he expressed doubts. The portrait of Nicholls, founded partly on the confidence of Ellen Nussey, seemed to him to be unjustified. Ellen Nussey, who hated Arthur, insists that his marital claims had perverted Charlotte's writing and she had to struggle against an interruption of her career. It is true that Arthur found Nussey to be too close to his wife, and he insisted that she should destroy her letters – although this never actually happened.


title: Brontë family

text: Mrs. Gaskell's book caused a sensation and was distributed nationwide. The polemic launched by Charlotte's father resulted in a squabble that only served to increase the family's fame.


title: Brontë family

text: During Charlotte's lifetime friends and sponsors visited the parsonage, including Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth, Ellen Nussey, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Store Smith, a young writer from Manchester, Bessie Parkes, who recounted her visit to Mrs. Gaskell, and Abraham Holroyd, poet, antiquarian, and historian. However, following the publication of the book and the pastor's public remonstrations, the parsonage became a place of pilgrimage for admirers wanting to see it with their own eyes. Charlotte's husband recalled that he had to protect his father-in-law, when on the short path to the church they had to push their way through the crowds of people wanting to reach out and touch the cape of the father of the Brontë girls. The hundreds of visitors became thousands, coming from all over Britain and even from across the Atlantic. Whenever he agreed to meet them, Patrick received them with utmost courtesy and recounted the story of his brilliant daughters, never omitting to express his displeasure at the opinions held about Charlotte's husband.


title: Brontë family

text: The flow of visitors has never abated. Indeed, the parsonage at Haworth received an estimated 88,000 visitors in 2017.


title: Brontë family

text: The Brontë Parsonage Museum is managed and maintained by the Brontë Society, which organises exhibitions and takes care of the cultural heritage represented by objects and documents that belonged to the family. The society has branches in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, South Africa, and the USA.


title: Brontë family

text: In 1904, Virginia Woolf visited Haworth and published an account in "The Guardian" on 21 December. She remarked on the symbiosis between the village and the Brontë sisters, and on the fact that utensils and clothes that would normally have disappeared before those who used them, have survived, enables one to better understand their singular presence. She wrote: "Haworth expresses the Brontës; the Brontës express Haworth; they fit like a snail to its shell".


title: Brontë family

text: The line of Patrick Brontë died out with his children, but Patrick's brother had notable descendants, including James Brontë Gatenby, whose most important work was studying Golgi bodies in various animals, including humans, and Peter Gatenby, the medical director of the UN.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ten states, three additional public land-grant universities, and one private research university. The conference is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. The SEC participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I in sports competitions; for football it is part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Members of the SEC have won many national championships: 43 in football, 21 in basketball, 41 in indoor track, 42 in outdoor track, 24 in swimming, 20 in gymnastics, 13 in baseball (College World Series), and one in volleyball. In 1992, the SEC was the first NCAA Division I conference to hold a championship game (and award a subsequent title) for football and was one of the founding member conferences of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The current SEC commissioner is Greg Sankey, who has been the commissioner since 2015. The conference sponsors team championships in nine men's sports and twelve women's sports. The conference is successful financially, with high revenue distribution to its members. During the fiscal year 2014–15 an SEC record $455.8 million was generated, which was a sizable increase over the $292.8 million for the 2013–14, largely due to the revenue from the introduction of the SEC Network, a television network operated by the conference dedicated to SEC conference athletic events.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: On July 27, 2021, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas at Austin (Texas) of the Big 12 Conference submitted formal requests to join the SEC. On July 29, 2021, the presidents and chancellors of the current 14 SEC schools voted unanimously to offer membership to both schools, with both schools officially accepting the invitation the next day. The Sooners and Longhorns possess the Big 12's top two highest-earning athletics programs, with the Longhorns earning the nation's largest revenue. The Sooners earn the nation's eighth-largest revenue, which would be fifth-highest in the SEC.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC consists of 14 member institutions located in the U.S. states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The SEC is divided into East and West Divisions, although the divisional alignment is not strictly geographic, with Missouri in the East Division while being farther west than several West Division schools, and Auburn in the West Division despite being located farther east than East Division schools Missouri and Vanderbilt. These divisional groupings are applied only in football, baseball, and women's soccer, for both scheduling and standings purposes. In football, the two division winners meet in the SEC Championship Game.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: On July 27, 2021, Oklahoma and Texas formally notified the SEC they were seeking "an invitation for membership" beginning July 1, 2025. On July 29, 2021, the presidents of the current 14 schools of the SEC voted unanimously to extend an offer of admission to Oklahoma and Texas. On July 30, 2021, both institutions' boards of regents unanimously voted to accept the invitation, effective for the 2025–26 academic year.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC was established December 8 and 9, 1932, in Knoxville, TN, when the thirteen members of the Southern Conference located west and south of the Appalachian Mountains left to form their own conference. Ten of the thirteen founding members have remained in the conference since its inception: the University of Alabama, Auburn University, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, the University of Kentucky, Louisiana State University ("LSU"), the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"), Mississippi State University, the University of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University ("Vandy").


title: Southeastern Conference

text: White southerners committed to maintaining segregation created controversy preceding the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. White southern segregationists created controversy by claiming that Grier should be barred from the game due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play at all due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin's opposition to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer rejected the request and threatened to resign. The game went on as planned.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The 1959 Mississippi State men's basketball team, led by all-American Bailey Howell, finished its season 24–1, winning the conference title. They did not participate in the NCAA tournament as school and state officials would not permit the team to play against Black players from northern schools. Four years later, in 1963, Loyola, with four black starters, played Mississippi State in the "Game of Change".


title: Southeastern Conference

text: It was not until 1966 that African Americans first participated in an SEC athletic contest, and the first black scholarship athletes did not play in the SEC until the 1967–68 school year.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The first African American to compete in the SEC was Stephen Martin, who walked on to the Tulane baseball team in that school's final SEC season of 1966. In August of that same year, Kentucky enrolled Nate Northington and Greg Page on football scholarships, and Vanderbilt enrolled Godfrey Dillard and Perry Wallace on basketball scholarships. At the time, the NCAA did not allow freshmen to compete on varsity teams, which meant that these pioneers could not play until 1967. Page died from complications of a spinal cord injury suffered during a football practice before ever playing a game, while Dillard suffered a career-altering injury before getting a chance to play for Vanderbilt's varsity and transferred to Eastern Michigan. The remaining two both played in the 1967–68 school year. Northington made his overall debut against Indiana on September 23, 1967 and his SEC debut against Ole Miss the following week on September 30 (the day after Page's death), while Wallace made his varsity debut later that year.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: In 1990, the SEC expanded from ten to twelve member universities with the addition of the Arkansas Razorbacks and the South Carolina Gamecocks. The two new members began SEC competition with the 1991–1992 basketball season.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: At the same time, the SEC organized competition for some sports into two divisions. The Western Division comprised six of the seven member schools in the Central Time Zone, while the Eastern Division comprised the five member schools in the Eastern Time Zone plus Vanderbilt, which is in the Central Time Zone but was placed in the Eastern Division to preserve its rivalry with Tennessee. Initially, the divisional format was used in football, baseball, and men's basketball. The divisional format was dropped for men's basketball following the 2011–2012 season.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Following expansion, the SEC was the first conference to receive permission from the NCAA to sponsor an annual football championship game that did not count against NCAA limits on regular-season contests, featuring the winners of the conference's Eastern and Western divisions. The 1992 and 1993 championship games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, and all championship games from 1994 onward have been held in Atlanta—first at the Georgia Dome until its closure and demolition after the 2016 season, and since 2017 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: On September 25, 2011, the SEC Presidents and Chancellors, acting unanimously, announced that Texas A&M University would join the SEC effective July 1, 2012, to begin competition in nineteen of the twenty sports sponsored by the SEC during the 2012–13 academic year. On November 6, 2011, the SEC commissioner announced that the University of Missouri would also join the SEC on July 1, 2012. For football, Texas A&M was scheduled to compete in the Western Division, and Missouri in the Eastern Division. Texas A&M and Missouri both left the Big 12 Conference.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: On July 27, 2021, Oklahoma and Texas formally notified the SEC they were seeking "an invitation for membership" beginning at the latest July 1, 2025. In a joint letter, which was made public, Texas president Jay Hartzell and Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz Jr. wrote, "We believe that there would be mutual benefit to the Universities on the one hand, and the SEC on the other hand, for the Universities to become members of the SEC." On July 29, 2021, the presidents of the current 14 schools of the SEC voted unanimously to extend an offer of admission to Oklahoma and Texas. The boards of regents for both institutions on July 30, 2021, accepted conference membership.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: In 2005, the member institutions of the Southeastern Conference formed the SEC Academic Consortium (SECAC), a collaborative endeavor designed to promote research, scholarship, and achievement amongst the universities.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: In 2011, the SEC Academic Consortium was relocated to the SEC headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, from its original home on the campus of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and was renamed SECU. The SECU rebranded its mission to better serve as a means through which the collaborative academic endeavors and achievements of Southeastern Conference universities would be promoted and advanced. The SECU's goals included highlighting the endeavors and achievements of SEC faculty, students and its universities; advancing the academic reputation of SEC universities; identifying and preparing future leaders for high-level service in academia; increasing the amount and type of study abroad opportunities available for students; and providing opportunities for collaboration among SEC university personnel. The Big Ten Conference, since 1958, has had a similar program, now called the Big Ten Academic Alliance.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC Symposium component of SECU was crafted by Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos, who at the time was the Vice President of the SEC Executive Committee and liaison to SECU. In an interview with Dr. Zeppos about the formation of the SECU he noted, "that the member institutions of the Southeastern Conference are committed to a shared mission of fostering research, scholarship, and achievement. The SEC Symposium represents a platform to connect, collaborate and promote a productive dialogue that will span disciplinary and institutional boundaries and allow us to work together for the betterment of society."


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC Academic Network was created in 2009 in partnership with ESPN. The SEC Academic Network was an online library of institutionally produced videos featuring academic initiatives and stories from all Southeastern Conference institutions. The SEC Academic Network was officially merged into the SECU operation.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Four SEC institutions are members of the prestigious Association of American Universities: Florida, Missouri, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt. Prior to the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M from the Big 12, the SEC had the fewest AAU members among Power Five conferences. The Big12 Conference had seven AAU members through the 2010–11 school year, but four of these schools left the conference in 2011 and 2012—Nebraska for the Big Ten in 2011 (a move that took effect shortly after that school was expelled from the AAU), Colorado for the Pac-12 in 2012, and Missouri and Texas A&M for the SEC in 2012, leaving that conference with three AAU members. Once Texas joins, the SEC will have five AAU members to the Big 12's two.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Total revenue includes ticket sales, contributions and donations, rights/licensing, student fees, school funds, and all other sources including TV income, camp income, food, and novelties. Total expenses includes coaching/staff, scholarships, buildings/grounds, maintenance, utilities and rental fees, and all other costs including recruiting, team travel, equipment and uniforms, conference dues, and insurance costs.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The Southeastern Conference sponsors championship competition in nine men's and twelve women's NCAA sanctioned sports. Under SEC conference rules reflecting the large number of male scholarship participants in football and attempting to address gender equity concerns (see also Title IX), each member institution is required to provide two more women's varsity sports than men's. A similar rule was recently adopted by the NCAA for all of DivisionI.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools (future members in gray):


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools (future members in gray):


title: Southeastern Conference

text: SEC teams did not play a uniform number of conference games until 1974. Prior to that, the number of conference games teams played ranged from four to eight, but most played a 6- or 7-game schedule. The league adopted a uniform 6-game schedule from 1974 to 1987, and added a seventh conference game from 1988 to 1991. Through this period and through the earlier years each SEC school had five permanent opponents, developing some traditional rivalries between schools, and the other games rotated around the other members of the conference.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: After expansion to twelve programs in 1992, the SEC went to an 8-game conference schedule, with each team playing the five other teams in their division and three opponents from the other division. The winners of the two divisions would then meet in the SEC Championship Game.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: From 1992 through 2002, each team had two permanent inter-divisional opponents, allowing many traditional rivalries from the pre-expansion era (such as Florida vs. Auburn, Kentucky vs. LSU, and Vanderbilt vs. Alabama) to continue. However, complaints from some league athletic directors about imbalance in the schedule (for instance, Auburn's two permanent opponents from the East were Florida and Georgia – two of the SEC's stronger football programs at the time – while Mississippi State played Kentucky and South Carolina every year) led to the SEC reducing the number of permanent inter-division opponents to one starting in the 2003 season. The TV networks televising SEC games were also pressuring for the change so attractive match-ups between non-traditional opponents would happen twice every five years instead of twice every eight years. With the subsequent expansion to 14 members in 2012, non-permanent cross-division opponents face each other in the regular season twice in a span of twelve years.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Under the current format, each school plays a total of eight conference games, consisting of the other six teams in its division, one school from the other division on a rotating basis, and one school from the other division that it plays each year. The permanent cross-division matchups are: Alabama–Tennessee; Arkansas–Missouri; Auburn–Georgia; LSU–Florida; Mississippi State–Kentucky; Ole Miss–Vanderbilt; Texas A&M–South Carolina.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The current scheduling arrangement was originally set to expire after the 2015 season, but the SEC presidents voted 10–4 in April 2014 to keep the current format for an additional six to eight seasons beyond 2015. Additionally, since 2016, SEC teams have been required to schedule at least one opponent each season from the other so-called "Power Five" conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, or Pac-12); games against select football independent schools also qualify, including Army, BYU, and Notre Dame.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Through end of the 2019 regular season including SEC Championship Game. Records reflect official NCAA results, including any forfeits or win vacating.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC Championship Game pits the SEC West Division representative against the East Division representative in a game held after the regular season has been completed. The first two SEC Championship football games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Since 1994, it has been played in Atlanta—first at the Georgia Dome through 2016, and since 2017 at its replacement, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with the current hosting contract running through 2027. The "home team" designation alternates between the division champions, going to the East champion in even-numbered years and the West champion in odd-numbered years. As of 2022, the West leads 18-13 in overall wins in the championship game against the East.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Payout is per team for the 2014 season; if different for opposing conference, payout for the SEC team is shown. Each conference member, irrespective of bowl participation, also receives an equal split of a payout to the SEC conference.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: ^ The Sugar Bowl is contractually obligated to select the SEC champion if that team is not participating in the College Football Playoff. In years where the champion is unavailable the Playoff Committee will assign another SEC team to participate in the Sugar. Alternatively, in years where the Sugar hosts a playoff game the SEC Champion will be sent to the Fiesta, Cotton, or Peach Bowl if not selected for the playoff.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: † The Big Ten and SEC will be eligible to face the ACC representative in the Orange Bowl at least three out of the eight seasons that it does not host a semifinal for the Playoff over a 12-year span. Notre Dame may be chosen the other two years if eligible.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: ° In years when the Big Ten places a team in the Orange Bowl, the Citrus Bowl will select from ACC teams remaining after the Playoff Committee and Orange Bowl make their selections.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: ¤ For the 2020 through 2025 seasons, the Big Ten and SEC will alternate which conference sends a team to the Duke's Mayo Bowl or the Las Vegas Bowl. SEC will be in the Las Vegas Bowl during the even years and Duke's Mayo Bowl during the odd years.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The total pay of head coaches includes university and non-university compensation including base salary, income from contracts, foundation supplements, bonuses and media and radio pay as of the 2021 season. As a private institution, Vanderbilt is not obligated to disclose salary information.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Each year, the conference selects various individual awards. In 1994, the conference began honoring former players from each school annually with the SEC Football Legends program.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: In 1982, the SEC Skywriters, a group of media covering the Southeastern Conference, selected members of their All-Time SEC Team for the first fifty years (1933–82) of the SEC.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The members of the SEC have longstanding rivalries with each other, especially on the football field. The following is a list of active rivalries in the Southeastern Conference with totals & records through the completion of the 2021 season.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Since the 2012–13 season, SEC teams have played an 18-game conference schedule, which includes two games (home and away) against each of three permanent rivals and single games against the remaining twelve teams in the conference. Men's basketball formerly used the East/West divisional alignment for regular-season scheduling and seeding the conference tournament, but it no longer does.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Before expansion to 14 teams, the conference schedule was 16 games. Although the divisions were eliminated beginning with the 2011–12 season, that season's schedule was still set according to the divisional alignments, with each team facing each team from its own division twice and each team from the opposite division once. As part of the proposal by SEC head coaches that led to the scrapping of the divisional structure, a task force of four coaches and four athletic directors was set to discuss future conference scheduling. At that time, options included a revamped 16-game schedule, an 18-game schedule, or a full double round-robin of 22 conference games. However, these discussions came before Texas A&M and Missouri were announced in late 2011 as incoming members for the 2012–13 season, which required a format that could support 14 teams rather than twelve.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: At the 2012 SEC spring meetings, league athletic directors adopted an 18-game conference schedule. Each school had one permanent opponent that it played home and away every season, and faced four other opponents in a home-and-home series during a given season, and then the remaining teams one each (four home, four away). The permanent opponents were Alabama-Auburn, Arkansas-Missouri, Florida-Kentucky, Georgia-South Carolina, LSU-Texas A&M, Ole Miss-Mississippi State, and Tennessee-Vanderbilt. The home-and-home opponents, apart from the permanent opponent, rotated each season.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The 2014 SEC spring meetings saw a further change to the scheduling format. While the athletic directors voted to stay with an 18-game conference schedule, they increased the number of permanent opponents for each school from one to three. Each school retained its permanent opponent from the 2012–2014 period while adding two others.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: From 1966 to 1967, following Tulane's departure, through 1990–91, the year prior to the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina, teams played a double round-robin, 18-game conference schedule. No team was undefeated in this period, though three teams went 17–1 (Kentucky in 1970 and 1986, LSU in 1981). During the period from 1992 to 2012 when the league slate was 16 games, Kentucky went undefeated in SEC play in 1996, 2003, and 2012 (although only the 2003 team went on to win the conference tournament).


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Since the return to an 18-game conference schedule following the 2012 conference expansion, two teams have gone undefeated in SEC play: Florida in 2013–14 and Kentucky in 2014–15.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The table below lists each school's permanent men's basketball-only scheduling partners beginning in 2014–15.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The "SEC men's basketball tournament" (also known simply as the "SEC tournament") is the competition that determines the SEC's automatic bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Notably, it does not determine the SEC conference champion in men's basketball—the conference has awarded its championship to the team(s) with the best regular-season record since the 1950–51 season. It is a single-elimination tournament and seeding is based on regular season records.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: With the expansion to 14 members in 2012, the 2013 tournament was the first with a new format covering five days. The teams seeded eleven through fourteen play on the first day, with the winners advancing to play the No.5 and No.6 seeds on Thursday. The top four teams receive a "double bye" and do not play until the quarterfinals on Friday.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: As of the upcoming 2022–23 season, the tournament has most often been held at two venues that have each hosted twelve times. Louisville Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, served as the regular host from 1941 until the tournament was discontinued after the 1952 edition. The Georgia Dome in Atlanta first hosted the tournament in 1995 and most recently hosted in 2014. Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, is now the regular host, with that venue hosting the tournament from 2015 through 2030, except in 2018 and 2022 (years in which it instead hosted the SEC women's basketball tournament). Sometimes, the tournament will take place at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, or Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. The 2018 tournament was held at Scottrade Center, now Enterprise Center, in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 2022 tournament was at Amalie Arena.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Prior to moving to the Georgia Dome, the tournament (during its modern, post-1979 era) was most often contested at the venue now known as Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, home of the SEC's headquarters and centrally located prior to the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina. Other sites to host include on-campus arenas at LSU, Tennessee and Vanderbilt; Rupp Arena in Lexington; and the Orlando Arena.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: The SEC Men's Basketball Player of the Year is awarded to the player who has proven himself, throughout the season, to be the most exceptional talent in the Southeastern Conference. Various other awards, such as the best tournament player in the SEC tournament and all conference honors are given out throughout the year.


title: Southeastern Conference

text: Schools play a 30-game league schedule (10 three-game series). Since 1996, schools have played all five schools within their division and five schools from the opposite division. Before the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M in advance of the 2013 season, schools missed only one opponent from the opposite division in a given season; each school now misses three opponents from the opposite division.