the encyclopedia of early earth by isabel greenberg

“I had to step back in the end, because there was so much source material-too much. Greenberg, a voracious reader of both prose and graphic novels, had read the Brontës’ texts, and re-read them, as well as multiple biographies, while researching Glass Town. I don’t think that many creators are that immersed in their own work. “As someone who has also invented an imaginary world, I’m interested in the idea of world-building and why people build worlds. It was so amazing to me how detailed was, how complete, and how real it seemed to them. (Emily and Anne, feeling scorned, conjured their own world: Gondal.) “I had no idea they had invented such a detailed and amazing body of work before they became famous,” Greenberg says. She came across the siblings’ world through their “juvenilia”: manuscripts written as teens, when the four siblings penned stories set in the fictional Glass Town, predominantly led by elder siblings Branwell and Charlotte. “If people who like the Brontës come to Glass Town, I would like that,” Greenberg says.

It may well do because, published in the bicentenary year of the birth of the youngest Brontë, Anne, the novel addresses the four siblings’ relationship and, rousingly, the imaginary world they co-created, called Glass Town. In some ways it was a dangerous thing to happen with my first, because I thought, ‘Oh, that’s just what happens with graphic novels’.” She hopes her third title-“quite a departure for me”-will attract a new audience, albeit not at the expense of her current readership. Greenberg says her initial success was “very exciting, but a bit strange. Her follow-up, One Hundred Nights of Hero, was critically lauded: the Observer hailed it as “wondrously intricate instant classic” in a review so glowing it required re-reading.

Her first, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, was a breakout success: a spin-off of her Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize-winning entry, the novel won two Eisner Awards, became a New York Times bestseller and was named Best Book at the British Comic Awards. If Isabel Greenberg’s third graphic novel, Glass Town, is better than her first two-as she believes-then Jonathan Cape may have a hit on its hands.

The encyclopedia of early earth by isabel greenberg