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Firth, Elizabeth, c1797-1837

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: c1797 - 1837
  • Usage: 1824 - 1837

Biography

Elizabeth Firth lived at Kipping House at Thornton, near Bradford, to which village the Brontë Family moved in 1815 when Patrick Brontë became curate there. Elizabeth was then 18 years old; her father, John Scholefield Firth, was a doctor; her mother (Elizabeth, nee Holt) had died in an accident in 1814. A friendship rapidly developed between Elizabeth and Maria Brontë, and both father and daughter were asked to become godparents to the Brontës daughter Elizabeth. In 1820 the Brontës moved to Haworth, and the following year Maria died. In December 1821 Patrick Brontë proposed marriage to Elzabeth Firth, a proposal which is thought to have led to a rupture in her relations with the Brontë family of almost two years before the relationship was resumed. Elizabeth married the Rev. James Clarke Franks in September 1824.

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

Elizabeth Firth Manuscripts

 Fonds
Reference code: 58
Scope and Contents Diaries and related papers of Elizabeth Firth, recording her life in the Yorkshire village of Thornton in the 1810s and 1820s. The diaries which form the bulk of the collection are of the simplest kind: brief day-to-day records of social and church occasions of a young girl in a small village near Bradford and at boarding school near Wakefield. Their principal interest lies in the references to members of the Brontë family with whom Elizabeth was acquainted, and the collection includes a...
Dates: 1812 - 1961
Found in: Special Collections and Archives

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