Bront Society members the world over are being urged to help finance the re-publication of a rare book on the life of the father of the famous authors.

Society life-member Imelda Marsden spend more than ten years searching for a copy of the volume about the Reverend Patrick Bront, written in 1897 by WW Yates, editor of the Dewsbury Reporter.

And now she owns a copy -- bought for £70 from a rare book dealer -- she wants others to have a chance of possessing a volume.

She plans to reproduce 250 copies of The Father of the Bronts - the Bront Society has publishing rights - at a cost of £2,400.

But she needs help to meet the cost and has appealed to Bront Society members throughout the world.

"It's a wonderful book and tells of Mr Bront's life before he arrived in Haworth, especially his time as a curate in Dewsbury. It also contains reproductions and letter from Charlotte," she said.

The original book is a hardback in red leather and gold, with a photographic plate of Patrick.

The new book will be a paperback and illustrated by Mrs Marsden's 18 year-old daughter Catherine, a design student at Huddersfield University.

She hopes it will be priced at between £12 and £15, and interest in owning a copy has already come from Bradford University and Bradford and Kirklees libraries.

Money raised will go towards Bront Spirit, a fund set up to refurbish the schoolroom in Haworth, where Charlotte taught, and Holly Bank School, Mirfield, formerly Roe Head, where she was a teacher.

Her sisters Emily and Anne were pupils there for a short while.

Patrick Bront came from Ireland to study at St John's College, Cambridge, working as a curate in Essex and then Dewsbury from 1809.

He then moved to Hartshead and was married in Guiseley to Maria Branwell in 1812, the couple's first two children, Maria and Elizabeth, were born there.

He became rector at Thornton, near Bradford, in 1815, and Charlotte, Emily and Anne were all born there.

In 1820 he moved to Haworth as rector.