Ian M Emberson, 1936 – 2013

Biography at August 2011:
 
Ian M Emberson is a retired music librarian, writer and artist. He was born in 1936 at Hove in Sussex, and is proud to have been Christened by the poet Andrew Young.
 
His mother was a gardener’s daughter, who had been brought up in the village of Alloway in Ayrshire, where Robert Burns was born. His father was a journalist from Essex. He took to painting and writing in early childhood, and has pursued these activities on and off ever since.
 
During his National Service Ian was in the Royal Signals, serving in Cyprus between 1955 and 1957. Since then he has earned a living in both horticulture and librarianship, before taking early retirement in 1986. His twelve published books include : Pirouette of Earth : a Novel in Verse (1995), Pilgrims from Loneliness : an Interpretation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette (2005), Yorkshire Lives & Landscapes (2006) and an E book – The Zig Zag Path (2010) – a 200 page illustrated poem, available free on his website.
 
In 1996 Bradford Playhouse produced his one-actor play Cockerel Crowing Dawn – based on the life of the Russian composer Mussorgsky. Ian also wrote the libretto for Daniel Bath’s opera The Forest – first performed at the Hebden Bridge Festival in 2003. Four other composers have set his poetry to music : Peter Copley, John Bartlett, Gordon Dyson and Robin Terry.
 
Ian met his wife Catherine through The Brontë Society, and they live together in the small town of Todmorden – close to the Lancashire border, but actually just in Yorkshire. They have co-operated on various pieces of research, one of which led to the rediscovery of George Sowden’s Recollections of the Brontës, which had lain virtually forgotten for over a hundred years.
 
His artwork is best known through postcards and book illustrations. Ian M Emberson Website : www.ianemberson.co.uk