"Oblivion: The lost diaries of Branwell Bronte"

Join Dr. Dean de la Motte as he shares his research on the diaries of Branwell Bronte, the focus of his new book Oblivion: The lost diaries of Branwell Bronte. A reconstruction of the life of the famous literary sisters’ often-misunderstood brother, Oblivion traces Branwell Brontë’s meandering journey across the north of England, and his encounters with poets, sculptors, booksellers, prostitutes, publicans, railway workers, farmers, manufacturers and clergymen.

Through his experiences we contemplate the ineffable but fleeting ecstasy of sex, the existence of God, the effects of drugs and alcohol and the nature of addiction itself, the desire for fame, and the bitter resentment of poets and intellectuals who feel unappreciated by an increasingly materialistic, mechanized society in a century rapidly transitioning to modernity.

A California native, Dean de la Motte has degrees in comparative literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; he studied French and German at the Université de Poitiers (France) and the Deutsche Schule of Middlebury College (Vermont), respectively. The co-editor of Making the News: Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France and Approaches to Teaching Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, he has published a wide range of articles on nineteenth-century French literature and culture and numerous essays on the teaching of literature.

From 2000 to 2014 he worked as a chief academic officer, including eight years as the provost of Salve Regina University. He now teaches courses in French and English, including an annual seminar entitled Scribblemania: The Brontës and the Passion of Writing. In the fall of 2021, he was a visiting scholar in Lyon, France. Oblivion is his first novel.