Patrick Brontë (1777-1861) was the father of the famous "Brontë Sisters"--Anne, Charlotte, and Emily--three of Victorian England's greatest novelists, but he was also a fascinating man in his own right, and not nearly as unsympathetic a character as Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë would have us believe. Born into poverty in Ireland, he won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained into the Church of England. He...