Remembering the 1824 Crow Hill Bog Burst: Patrick Brontë as a Science Writer

This paper explores Patrick Brontë’s legacy as a science writer by comparing his texts on the 1824 Crow Hill Bog Burst (including letters, a delivered sermon, a published sermon, a poem and prefaces to the poem and sermon) to other accounts of the ecological disaster by Airedale poet John Nicholson, Yorkshire agriculturist James Mitchell and millhand John Pickles. This comparison recovers the enduring scientific value of Patrick’s widely misunderstood account of this event and shows how his work incorporates tropes from natural theology to emphasise humans’ moral responsibilities for environmental crises, ultimately making his burst writings an early example of Anthropocene discourse.