An Earnest Address: Insights Into Patrick Brontë’s Opinions in the 1830s Decade of Reform

Earnest Address to the Working Classes (1836), a pseudonymous tract—a copy of which was owned and valued by the Reverend Patrick Brontë—provides an insight into the opinions that would have been talked over in the Haworth Parsonage as his daughters were growing up. These include the background to Charlotte Brontë's visit to a Catholic confessional during her time in Belgium; the tensions in financing the Haworth Parish Church in a largely dissenting village; and Patrick's political campaign against the new workhouse system. This special interest article advocates that Earnest Address to the Working Classes deserves to be better known and more widely studied.