About 150 years ago, a village church priest, Patric Bronte, in Yorkshire, England, had three lovely, intelligent daughters but his hopes fell entirely on the only male successor, Branwell, a youth with remarkable talent in both art and literature.

    Branwell's father and sisters saved their pennies to pack him off to London's Royal Academy of Arts, but if art was his calling, he dialed a wrong number. Within weeks he ended up going back home, a penniless failure.

    Hopes still high, the family landed Branwell a job as a private tutor, hoping this would free him to develop his literary skills and achieve the success and fame that he deserved. Failure again.

    Still, the selfless sisters set aside their own goals, farming themselves out as teachers and governesses in support of their increasingly indebted brother, convinced the world must eventually recognize his genius. As failure multiplied, Branwell turned to alcohol, then opium, and eventually died as he had lived: a failure. So died hope in the one male — but what of the three sisters?

    During Branwell's last years, the girls published a book of poetry at their own expense (under a pen name, for fear of reviewers' prejudice against females). Even Branwell might have laughed: they sold only two copies.

    They didn't give up. Instead, they continued in their spare time, late at night by candlelight, to pour out their contained emotion, writing of what they knew best, of women in conflict with their natural desires and social condition, in reality, less fiction than autobiography! And 19^th century literature was transformed by Anne's Agnes Grey, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.

    But years of sacrifice for Branwell had eventually ruined their health. Emily took ill at her brother's funeral and died within 3 months, aged 29; Anne died 5 months later, aged 30; Charlotte lived only to age 39. If only they had been highly thought of instead of sacrificed.

    No one remembers Branwell's name, much less of his art or literature, but the Bronte sisters' tragically short lives teach us even more of life than literature.