BRENTANO, KLEMENS (1778-1842), German poet and novelist, was born at Ehrenbreitstein on the 8th of September 1778. His sister was the well-known Bettina von Arnim (q.v.), Goethe’s correspondent. He studied at Jena, and afterwards resided at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he joined the Roman Catholic Church and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfort and Munich, actively engaged in Catholic propaganda. He died at Aschaffenburg on the 28th of July 1842. Brentano, whose early writings were published under the pseudonym Maria, belonged to the Heidelberg group of German romantic writers, and his works are marked by excess of fantastic imagery and by abrupt, bizarre modes of expression. His first published writings were Satiren und poetische Spiele (1800), and a romance Godwi (1801-1802); of his dramas the best are Ponce de Leon (1804), Victoria (1817) and Die Gründung Prags (1815). On the whole his finest work is the collection of Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (published posthumously in 1852); his short stories, and more especially the charming Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1838), which has been translated into English, are still popular. Brentano also assisted Ludwig Achim von Arnim, his brother-in-law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806-1808).
Brentano’s collected works, edited by his brother Christian, appeared at Frankfort in 9 vols. (1851-1855). Selections have been edited by J.B. Diel (1873), M. Koch (1892), and J. Dohmke (1893). See J.B. Diel and W. Kreiten, Klemens Brentano (2 vols., 1877-1878), the introduction to Koch’s edition, and R. Steig, A. von Arnim und K. Brentano (1894).
BRENTANO, LUDWIG JOSEPH [called Lujo] (1844- ), German economist, a member of the same family as the preceding, was born at Aschaffenburg on the 18th of December 1844. He received some of his academical education in Dublin. In 1868 he made a thorough study of trade-unionism in England, which resulted in his principal work, Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1871-1872; Eng. trans, by L.T. Smith). The book was assailed by Bamberger and other economists, but is important not only as an authority on modern associations of workmen, but for having given an impetus to the study of the gilds of the middle ages, and the examination of the great stores of neglected information bearing upon the condition of the people in olden days. Brentano’s other works are of a more theoretical character, and chiefly relate to political economy, of which he was professor at Breslau from 1872 to 1882, at Strassburg from 1882 to 1888, at Vienna 1888-1889, at Leipzig 1889-1891, and at Munich since 1891. We may mention Das Arbeitsverhältnis gemäss dem heutigen Recht (1877); Die christlich-soziale Bewegung in England (1883); Über das Verhältnis von Arbeitslohn und Arbeitszeit zur Arbeitsleistung (1893); Agrarpolitik (1897).
BRENTFORD, a market town in the Brentford parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, 10½ m. W. of Waterloo terminus, London, by the London & South-Western railway, at the junction of the river Brent with the Thames. Pop. of urban district (1901) 15,171. The Grand Junction Canal joins the Brent, affording ample water-communications to the town, which has considerable industries in brewing, soap-making, saw-milling, market-gardening, &c. The Grand Junction waterworks are situated here. Brentford has been the county-town for elections since 1701.
In 1016 Brentford, or, as it was often called Braynford, was the scene of a great defeat inflicted on the Danes by Edmund Ironside. In 1280 a toll was granted by Edward I., who granted the town a market, for the construction of a bridge across the river, and in the reign of Henry VI. a hospital of the Nine Orders of Angels was founded near its western side. In 1642 a battle was fought here in which the royalists defeated the parliamentary forces. For his services on this occasion the Scotsman Ruthven, earl of Forth, was made earl of Brentford, a title afterwards conferred by William III. on Marshal Schomberg. Brentford was during the 16th and 17th centuries a favourite resort of London citizens; and its inn of the Three Pigeons, which was kept for a time by John Lowin, one of the first actors of Shakespeare’s plays, is frequently alluded to by the dramatists of the period. Falstaff is disguised as the “Fat Woman of Brentford” in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, and numerous other references to the town in literature point, in most cases, to its reputation for excessive dirt. The “two kings of Brentford” mentioned in Cowper’s Task, and elsewhere, seem to owe their mythical existence to the play, The Rehearsal, by George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham, produced in 1671.
South of Brentford, towards Isleworth, is Sion House, a mansion founded by Lord Protector Somerset in 1547, and rebuilt and enlarged by the 10th earl of Northumberland and Sir Hugh Smithson, afterwards duke of Northumberland, the architects being Inigo Jones and Robert Adam. The gardens are very beautiful. The site of Sion or Syon House was previously occupied by a convent of Bridgetine nuns established at Twickenham by Henry V. in 1415 and removed here in 1431.