Charlotte Brontë's readers

Columbus Alive reviews the Available Light Theatre production of Jane Eyre: A Memory, A Fever, A Dream.

In her 1847 novel “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Brontë addresses her “reader” directly time and again, telling us what to think or not to think, summoning our support, chastising us. So it makes eminent sense that in adapting the novel for Available Light Theatre, Daniel Elihu Kramer puts a handful of those readers directly on the stage to remember encountering the novel and to respond with its personal impact.
Acacia Duncan directs with a care that applies Mr. Rochester’s description of Jane as “at once so frail and so indomitable” to the tale itself. She is aided by a cast of four that brings both Brontë’s characters and the contemporary respondents to vivid life.
As Jane herself, Robyn Rae Stype embodies Rochester’s description with plainspoken ferocity and strength. Elena M. Perantoni flows seamlessly from the icy Mrs. Reed to the gentle, doomed little Helen Burns.
Michelle Gilfillan Schroeder brings all of her considerable skills to the stage as the older and wiser Narrator Jane, lending the inner voice and perspective that made Jane such an unconventional heroine. Then Schroeder surpasses herself in her brief but intense excursion into the mind of Bertha, the “madwoman in the attic.”
Jeff Horst, who possesses one of the supplest faces on any Central Ohio stage, switches between the Lowood orphanage tyrant Mr. Brocklehurst and the brooding Mr. Rochester in an eye’s twinkle. (Jay Weitz)

The Daily Press refers to Jane Eyre when discussing the wedding industry.

And as couples are deciding on the myriad of details, each of which comes with a price tag, we suggest they consider the words of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, whose marriage to Mr. Rochester was one of the most romantic in all literature: "Reader, I married him. [I]t was a quiet wedding."

We don't know why they bothered with the whole "[I]t" thing when it's a different sentence in the original:

Reader, I married him.  A quiet wedding we had. . .

The Puyallup Herald discusses the classics and admits that,

I perfectly understand “Wuthering Heights” is a pretty long and difficult slog through the literary moor. (Tim Wadham)

Oh. Alright then.

Fotogramas (Spain) recalls that Luis Buñuel's Abismos de pasión used Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as soundtrack while Cineblog (Italy) lists Wuthering Heights 1939 as one of Laurence Olivier's 10 most remarkable films. The Sabotage Times reviews the album I Want You To Destroy Me by Ghost Outfit.

On a tangential note, the video to ‘W A S T E’ is an extra visual clue as to their compulsively tormented state. Frontman Jacq Hardman thrashes around a subterranean cell, mascara running down his face like a morning-after babe mid-breakdown. You can almost hear him tearing his hair out.
It’s not sadism, nor is it voyeurism. It exists at a point of complete consumption within a relationship at the expense of oneself. U2 once wrote a song along similar lines – about the paradox of pleasure and pain – but it wasn’t this good.
It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination to say it all gets a bit ‘Wuthering Heights’, a bit ‘Cathy and Heathcliff’ in parts: “I can forgive my murderer, but yours! How can I?”; “You said I killed you – haunt me, then”. Such lines paint a bleak picture of two troubled men, but comparing bands to literary anti-heroes makes it too easy to forget that they are bands. And it would be a fallacy to suggest Ghost Outfit are only happy when it rains. (Lucy Holt)

A Book A Week posts about Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

Seven Women

A new French book which traces common elements between seven women writers Emily Brontë, Marina Tsvetaeva, Virginia Woolf, Colette, Sylvia Plath, Ingeborg Bachmann and Djuna Barnes:

7 femmesLydie Salvayre
Éditions Perrin, April 2013
ISBN : 978-2-262-03469-6
Pages : 240

Sept portraits intimistes et enlevés des plus grandes figures littéraires et féminines du début du XXe siècle.

Sept femmes. Sept allumées pour qui l'écriture n'est pas un supplément d'existence mais l 'existence même. Sept oeuvres dont la force e t la beauté ont marqué Lydie Salvayre et décidé pour beaucoup de sa vie. Sept parcours, douloureux pour la plupart, dont elle suit les élans, les angoisses, les trébuchements et les fragiles victoires.

Lydie Salvayre est l'auteur de douze romans, parmi lesquels La Déclaration (Prix Hermès du premier roman), La Compagnie des spectres (Prix Novembre, aujourd'hui Prix Décembre) et BW (Prix François-Billetdoux). Ses livres sont traduits dans une vingtaine de langues. Certains ont été adaptés au théâtre.

You can read articles about the book or reviews on France 3, France Inter,  Page des Librairies:

Emily Brontë a préféré vivre isolée plutôt que se mêler à ses semblables. (Marie-Laure Turoche) (Translation)

Chacune de ces femmes lui parle de sa propre vie, réveille des souvenirs, lui offre ou lui a offert un regard neuf. Emily Brontë secoue la mémoire de l’internat et de l’adolescente qu’elle fut, fascinée par l’intransigeance sauvage et absolue du héros des Hauts de Hurlevent, dont elle était, bien sûr, amoureuse. La même adolescente se mue en femme impertinente, sensuelle et légère, détachée des contingences amoureuses dans La Naissance du jour de Colette, «vision on ne peut plus éloignée de celle d’Emily Brontë dans Les Hauts de Hurlevent, lu la même année, reconnaît Lydie Salvayre, et dont le contraste vient m’enseigner qu’une même chose peut être regardée avec le même aplomb de dix façons différentes, ce qui, et je pèse mes mots, bouleverse ma vie.» (Eléonor Sulser in Le Temps) (Translation)

Quant à cette Emily Brontë qui vit paumée dans un village du Yorkshire, elle va affirmer, bien avant Freud, qu'il y a une part obscure dans l'homme, une fureur, une violence fondamentale qui peut conduire aux pires désastres mais qui a ce pouvoir d'amener les hommes à une présence au ... (Julie Clarini in Le Monde) (Translation)

Shaping the landscape with a pen

The Amarillo Globe-News says the following about the DVD/Blu-ray release of Wuthering Heights 2011:

Director Andrea Arnold's rough-hewn adaptation of the Emily Brontë classic takes the story down to its rawest elements, injecting a perfectly appropriate racial element (Heathcliff here is played by James Howson as an Afro-Caribbean man who was born a slave). It's incredibly atmospheric, though sometimes a little too slowly paced and dreary. (Chip Chandler)

Speaking of Wuthering Heights, via @BronteParsonage and @AJacksonArtist on Twitter we see that a 1970s picture of Ashley Jackson at Top Withins was featured yesterday in the Yorkshire Post. Besides that, Ashley Jackson adds on Twitter,

they shaped the landscape with a pen, I hope to do that with a brush. Heritage needs to be saved for the future #Inspired

A.V. Club dates language by writers' usage when picking '13 Arrested Development quotes to summarize reactions to the new episodes':

Or you can put it in all caps (“I’M AFRAID I JUST BLUE MYSELF”) to represent a Bluth-prompted ejaculation—in the dated, Jane Eyre sense of the word. (Erik Adams, Noah Cruickshank, Zack Handlen, Will Harris, Steve Heisler, Ryan McGee, Josh Modell, Kyle Ryan, Oliver Sava, John Teti, and Todd VanDerWerff)

Female First interviews writer Sierra Cartwright and describes her previous work as follows:

Last year, she was delighted to be among the launch authors for the exciting Clandestine Classics imprint from Total-E-Bound. The project generated international interest, and her contribution, the expanded Jane Eyre, was featured in segments on such shows as Jimmy Kimmell and Anderson Cooper Live. Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and numerous other online sites also wrote features about the provocative new book. (Lucy Walton)

The Brontë Parsonage Facebook Page and News section share more pictures of the 1940s events at the museum this past weekend.

The Mankato Homeschooling Examiner links to a December 2011 issue of the free educational magazine Early Knowledge for Kids which featured a poem by Emily Brontë. Covers of Brontë novels are among the top ten picked by The Nerdy Reader, So Obsessed With and Lace Vintage Book Reviews. J_on_tour writes about a recent trip to Haworth.

Jane, Le Renard et Moi touring and being awarded

Isabelle Arsenault, the illustrator of Jane, Le Renard et Moi is touring France and Belgium presenting her works including the book:

May 17 Philippe Le Libraire, Paris
May 18 Brüssel Anspach / Brüssel Flagey, Brussels
May 19 La Petite Boucherie, Paris
May 22 L'Atélier d'en Face, Paris
May 23 Mollat, Bordeaux
May 24-May 25 Les drôles lecteurs de Monbazillac.

The book has been recently awarded with an award at the Salon du Livre, Quebec:

Back from the Salon du livre de Quebec awarded by a Bedeis Causa 2013! The Réal-Fillion award - given to an author, scriptwriter or cartoonist from the province of Quebec for the succes of its first professional album - was awarded to "Jane, le renard & moi"! Fanny Britt and I are delighted by this honour. For your information, the book is coming out in English this Fall, as "Jane, the Fox & me" (Groundwood books in North America, Walker Books in UK).

A generation of women dressing like Cathy

Scarsdale 10583 mentions the children book series The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood and says that they

are very popular with library patrons and have been reviewed by the School Library Journal, which described Book I as, "Jane Eyre meets Lemony Snicket in this smart, surprising satire. [...]" (Brian Shabto)

The Daily Trust (Nigeria) interviews 'Architect, writer, business partner, mother, wife, reader, humanitarian' Hadiza El-Rufai:

What book in your younger days impacted on you? Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. It had a great impact on me. I first read the novel when I was 13 years old and for some reason I identified so much with the protagonist, who was a strong woman far ahead of her time. (Eugenia Abu)

The Bath Chronicle features the local exhibition Laura Ashley: The Romantic Heroine at the Bath Fashion Museum.

The display will capture the Laura Ashley look that in the 1960s and 1970s inspired a generation of women to dress as though they were the milkmaid Tess of the d'Urbervilles from Thomas Hardy's novel, or perhaps Cathy from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

Too Fond is taking part in the #villettealong. ACReads picks the cover of April Lindner's Jane as one of her top ten covers. The Brontë Sisters shares an old picture of the Black Bull.

Wuthering Heights in Croydon

The Jane Thornton adaptation of Wuthering Heights is performed this week in Croydon, South London:

Ashcroft Theatre and Macho Productions present
Wuthering Heights
Adapted by Jane Thornton

Directed by Andrew Lynford
With Mark Homer and Adele Silva

Farfield Halls
May 21, 24, 25  7:30 PM
May 22, 23, 25  2:30 PM

The Croydon Guardian  interviews the director Andrew Lynford:

"It is coming together so well and I think it is going to be a really exciting show.
"The story is so well known and different generation will remember different productions of it.
"It is a story which can be recreated and redefined as it is about love, hated, jealousy and a whole load of human emotions. That is why it resonates with everybody."
He adds: "I have decided to keep to this adaptation in front of me without being too clever with it. I want it to be essentially a theatrical experience.
"For me it is great to be doing something that is considered a classic as I haven’t directed many classic before.
"It is a great fast paced performance and I think it will appeal to a wide range of people." (Andrew Bloss)

Dangerous, sexy bad boy

It seems that the story of a few narrow-minded (or plainly stupid) fellows dressing as Nazi officers in the 1940s weekend at Haworth is all over the news (Yorkshire Post, Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Telegraph or The Times). The Sunday Express even quotes the Brontë Society:

Brontë Society chairman Sally McDonald said: “It is regrettable if they’ve attended in those costumes. It casts a shadow over the weekend.” (Chris Riches)

There is even a petition online, sponsored by Hathaways of Haworth, to  to ban the use of nazi insignia and the wearing of SS uniforms. Fortunately, some newspapers also feature some of the real stuff: The Telegraph & Argus, for instance. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page also publishes a couple of pictures (here and here).

The winner of the Eurovision song contest, Emmelie de Forest is a Brontëite. Nordjyske (Denmark) interviews her:

Hvad læser du?
Jeg læser Bade romaner, krimier og biografier. Min yndlingsbog er af Stormfulde Højder Emily Brontë. Det er en Mørk stories mere der handler om om hævn end kærlighed, og er mit album faktisk meget inspireret af den. (Translation)

The Independent (Ireland) reviews Love is the Easy Bit by Mary Grehan:

Before Twilight divided female readers into Team Edward and Team Jacob, there was Wuthering Heights, in which Cathy was presented with a similar choice between the dependable, safe Edgar Linton and the dangerous, sexy bad boy Heathcliff.
Being only 11, the daughter of Sylvia, the narrator of Mary Grehan's debut novel, is too young to have read Emily Brontë's classic Victorian romance[.] (Eilis O'Hanlon)

On Wanderlust Rachel Ricks tells the following anecdote:

Of all the books I have read in my life, I can remember the physical book as well as – or even as part of – the actual story. I remember my 1970s series of Famous Five books that lined my childhood bookcase; the big old hardback copy of Peter Pan and Wendy with its colour plates; and then I remember my first borrowed copy of Wuthering Heights; and, for me, A Room with a View will always be associated with a sturdy hardback borrowed from the library that I got sand between all the pages as I read it on the beach one summer between college years.

The Star has a recommendation for today, May 20:

Brontë Walk, around Hathersage led by Paul Eyre, relaxed, 4m walk will follow in the footsteps of Jane Eyre, taking in locations associated with the title character of Charlotte Brontë’s most famous novel. Meet at 10.30am outside the George Hotel, Main Rd, Hathersage, S32 1BB. Contact Paul Eyre tel. 01709 838673/ 07753 982954/ paul.eyre@oddfellows.co.uk for more details.

SanLeandroPatch informs about a local screening of Wuthering Heights 2011 (June 8);  e-teatr.pl mentions the performance of Julia Holewińska and Kuba Kowalski's Wuthering Heights adaptation at the Kaliskich Spotkanich Teatralnych Festival; Loud and Little is reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Covered with Flour is doing a #Villettealong; Blog extrem de personal  si incredibil de subiectiv de subiectiv (in Romanian) reviews Jane Eyre.

At Home with the Brontës - A Review

At Home with the Brontës
The History of Haworth Parsonage and its Occupants
Ann Dinsdale
Amberley Publishing
ISBN 9781445608556

Coinciding with the redecoration of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Collections' Manager Ann Dinsdale looks back on the many inhabitants and looks of the house in her new book At Home with the Brontës.

'If these walls could talk' is a well-known idiom and we are pretty sure that it is often spoken - or at least thought - when visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum. What people often overlook when visiting the Museum is that the Brontës' lives weren't the only ones to unfold there. The parsonage was already lived in - though rather new, having been built in 1778-1779 - when the Brontës moved in in 1821 and others followed afterwards. However, the Brontës do seem to have been the family to have spent the longest period living there, and that's not counting their afterlife there.

Even after Sir James Roberts bought it for the Brontë Society in 1928, some people continued living there in their role of custodians. Harold Gillian Mitchel was the first custodian. He and his family lived in a 'few cramped rooms in the Wade wing of the Parsonage' from 1928 to 1961 and as one of his sons recalled,

We never saw 'the family next door', but we felt they existed.

And indeed, the separation between both worlds was flimsy:

A single glass-panelled door separated the Mitchells' living accommodation from the original Parsonage. 'Whenever you opened that door [...] you were stepping into a different, hushed place; with its stone flagged floor it was different, it even smelt different'.

Living and working there may be many a Brontëite's dream today, but the work of custodian, particularly at the beginning, wasn't easy . It was, in fact, very hard work and highly demanding. That glass-panelled door was also metaphorically flimsy as the whole family ended up working, even if unofficially of course.

Written in Ann Dinsdale's clear, concise prose, At Home with the Brontës is full of anecdotes and 'I couldn't have imagined' moments. It covers what's surely new ground for most Brontëites, who are invited to step in and look at the house from an altogether different angle to the one we are used to. The Brontë Parsonage not as the museum we all know (and obviously love) but as a regular house. Do you know who built it and do you know which house it resembles? Can you imagine what it must have been like to live there after the Brontës to the point of having to 'issue' a few postcards of the inside for rather nosey literary tourists? Can you picture some of the goings-on at the Brontë Society seeming straight out of a novel by Jasper Fforde? It's all there, together with many pictures of the house and its inhabitants through the years (including some of the new decoration) and a helpful chronology of the alterations and redecorations carried out since it was first built.

Anyone who has ever visited the Parsonage and felt that feeling of awe you unavoidably get within those 'four walls' will find At Home with the Brontës to be an interesting read. The life of the Brontë Parsonage is seriously more thrilling than you can begin to imagine.

The Brontë Sisters Squabbling like Toddlers

The Herald (Ireland) announces the TV sketch show Psychobitches (with Sharon Horgan) on Sky which among others will feature:

The women to seek treatment range from author Beatrix Potter, who believes the animals really are talking to her, to Eva Braun, who needs help for her seriously questionable taste in men, to Sylvia Plath, who is trying to write cheerier poems, and the Brontë sisters squabbling like toddlers. (Claire Murphy)

Audiophile Audition reviews the latest CD by the violinist Nicola Benedetti, The Silver Violin:

A particularly haunting arrangement, the music by Dario Marianelli for Jane Eyre (“My Edward & I”) has Alexei Grynyuk’s evocative piano play against Benedetti’s silken violin and the orchestra.

The Maine Sunday Telegram reviews Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline:

Kline has created two singularly disarming characters -- 91-year-old Vivian Daly, a canny and resourceful widow who lives in a Spruce Harbor mansion, and 17-year-old Molly Ayer, a goth with a skunk-stripe in her hair who was recently caught stealing "Jane Eyre" from the library. (Joan Silverman)

Tanya Gold is not very thrilled by Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. In the Sunday Times:

We have seen Gatsby decoration tips and Gatsby hats, born of the same moronic thought process that might imagine that Jane Eyre is really a novel about bonnets. 

The Sunday Herald reviews the Scottish Opera production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance:

Terry Gilliam-style cut-outs animate the stage. Sergeant of Police Graeme Broadbent has clearly done a tour of duty in Whitehall at John Cleese's Ministry of Silly Walks. Major-General Stanley's many daughters echo the semaphore version of Wuthering Heights while waving little Union flags.

Stephanie Hill on Policymic thinks that reading classics helps with your gaming techniques:

I like Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters and I read Moby-Dick and I liked that too. But the classics aren't exactly breaking news, and I'm never sure that they are giving me any particular life skills. Reading classic novels, I frequently feel guilty that I am not working my way through some text on how to help the poor, or stop global warming. Aside from padding my ego, what is the point of reading the classics?

The Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka) reviews the novel Giri Induwara by Yamuna Malini Perera:

And the theme of Emily Brontë's novel, Wuthering Heights, is akin to that of Giri Induwara in some way. That is the misery and suffering of Catherine the senior whose pain and frustration was heart-rending. The humiliation and frustration of Heathcliff prod him to take revenge on the wrong-doers.   (Somapala Arandara)

Paws on Books interviews the author Nick Osborne:

Why did you choose to write this particular book? I first started sketching out the story for Refuge in November 2006. (As I sit here writing this I have to pause – six years – bloody hell!)
I had an urge to write a love story, and if I could be so bold, a classic love story. It wasn’t that I thought I could ever write something on the level of a Charlotte Brontë, Leo Tolstoy or Louis de Bernieres, I doubted anything I wrote would even exist within their shadows, however those were the novels I always loved the most – grand, sweeping, romantic epics - Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Love In The Time of Cholera, Corelli’s Mandolin, Anna Karenina- novels which had an intentse central love story but which at their core were about so much more. So being utterly foolhardy that was the perilous journey I decided to take.

Heathcliff makes an apperance in this article on Revista Tango (Romania):

Heathcliff nu-și găsește puterea de a se umili în  fața iubirii decât după ce o părăsește și trăiește o viață departe de femeia care i-a sucit mințile și rostul. (Marilena Guduleasa)(Translation)

France Info reviews Au Bout de la Violence by Elina Feriel:

Au milieu de la grisaille, il y a quand même quelques bons souvenirs : un voyage à Venise, avec son professeur d'italien qu'elle aime beaucoup, et puis tous les livres qu'elle dévore : "Le rouge et le noir", "Candide", "Les hauts de Hurlevent"... (Jean Leymarie) (Translation)

 Erotica for all interviews I.J. Miller, author of Wuthering Nights.

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee

Some time ago we reported that the Dutch artist Nion was working in a musical version of a poem by Emily Brontë. Finally, the work has been released:

Thy Delightful Shade is a project in which I intend to set poetry by famous English poets to music. It was started in 2009, and it took some time to really finish a first release. These songs are rather different from my
previous releases, much more piano based and more 'ambient'.
This musical rendition of Emily Brontë's (originally untitled) poem Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee was released in May 2013. It is the first release from this project.

Here, you can listen to

Emily Jane Brontë's
Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee

Wuthering Heights, too racy

The Columbus Dispatch reviews the performances of the Available Light Theatre production Jane Eyre: A Memory, A Fever, A Dream:

Beautifully acted and intelligently shaped, Available Light Theatre’s world premiere brings out the brooding romanticism in Brontë’s Gothic melodrama about a governess who falls in love with her employer.
Yet, this is another modernist deconstruction of a classic by playwright Daniel Elihu Kramer, who conceived the troupe’s acclaimed 2010 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Adopting the same meta-theatrical style but to slightly less effect, Jane Eyre also weaves in brief interviews with contemporary fans of the novel as a playful commentary on the still-potent roots of its enduring appeal.
Acacia Duncan’s sensitive direction, sharpened by well-timed lighting changes by Carrie Cox, keep the many levels of reality at play here crystal clear.
The multileveled approach, especially helpful in balancing the story’s darker and more depressive dimensions, largely justifies yet another version of the oft-retold saga of suffering and loneliness.
At the same time, it poses some problems.
In an understandable effort to capture the novel’s distinctive driving consciousness while dramatizing its events, Kramer splits the title character into a Narrator (Michelle Gilfillan Schroeder, compassionate and strong as the older Jane) and the young Jane (Robyn Rae Stype, sympathetic and believable as she matures amid misery).
Perhaps partly because of that split but also because of Kramer’s solid writing, the most compelling role in this adaptation is surprising: Not the title character, as one would expect, but her complex object of desire.
As Rochester, the secretive master of Thornfield Hall, Jeff Horst projects marvelous depths and nuances. You can feel his passion and his grief, his ardent sincerity and fearful deception. Horst also finds glints of gallows humor amid the gloom.
As Jane Eyre, Stype and Schroeder are souful enough; Horst’s conflicted Rochester is more so. (...)
Like Brontë’s novel, Kramer’s play is likely to be embraced most passionately by women, but it deserves a broader audience. (Michael Grossberg)

The Globe and Mail reviews the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

Maybe it is the sheer glut of dinner-party scenes that leave this novel feeling more classically Victorian than any I have read in recent memory. In both America and England, as well Nigeria, diners discuss politics and art and food as though in a novel by Brontë or Dickens, while money and race and romantic imbroglios simmer beneath the table and among the servants (who in America, Ifemelu wryly observes, are called caterers). (Michael Christie)

The Daily Beast interviews the actress Alice Eve, wo plays Dr Carol Marcus in Star Trek Into Darkness:

Favorite books?
Portrait of a Lady, Jane Eyre, and then Andrew Marvell is my favorite poet. Everything in the Romantic movement is clearly a rebirth of grand proportions that kind of defined who we are, so Wordsworth, Keats, etc. My thesis at school was on Wordsworth. (Marlow Stern)

Keighley News talks about the events at the Haworth 1940s weekend. The Parsonage as we have reported before will take part in the celebrations:

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight will stage a fly-past featuring a Hurricane and Spitfire, weather permitting. The Parsonage car park will be transformed into an ‘airbase’, featuring a Dambusters exhibition, live entertainment and military vehicles.
And there will be displays by military and Land Army re-enactors on the Parsonage meadow. (...)
A series of special events will take place at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, spotlighting life there during the war years.
There will be talks by best-selling author Ann Dinsdale, museum director Prof Ann Sumner and parsonage education officer, Sue Newby.

Financial Times traces a profile of the artist Cornelia Parker. Her 2006 Brontëan Abstracts project is mentioned:

“I am very interested in clichés, they’re part of our psyche and they’ve been nominated to stand in for [big ideas such as] romanticism. I want to subvert them. Somehow, if you can reduce the most known things to an abstraction, if you can point to an abstraction … Like the pinhole made by Charlotte Brontë” – this was part of a project she did with the Brontë Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire. “I’m very happy with that piece; that gulf that you photograph. It’s not necessarily just about her, it’s about the human condition; you know she suffered huge grief. So I am very consciously using clichés – wedding rings, pearl necklaces, money, the house, the church, the forest. They’re archetypes.” (Liz Jobey)

Oliver Kamm, in The Times, criticises the use of the word 'decimate' in a too restricted way. In doing so, he quotes from Charlotte Brontë:

Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter in 1848 about conditions at the Clergy Daughters' School at Casterton (it's quoted in Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë): "Typhus fever decimated the school periodically; and consumption and scrofula, in every variety of form bad air and water, bad and insufficient diet can generate, preyed on the ill-fated pupils."
She doesn't mean, and can't mean, that the disease killed every tenth girl. 

The writer Malorie Blackman chooses her favourite children books in The Telegraph:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
What drew me into this book from the very first page was that Jane’s life from childhood onwards was presented and that made the tale both relevant and accessible. Mr Rochester was one of the first “bad boys” I’d ever read in literature. He was brooding, mysterious, secretive, misunderstood – and I loved that about him. And I loved the fact that Jane was plain and didn’t have any special qualities except her character. I could relate to that!

The actress Anna Chancellor reveals an anecdote from her school days to Financial Times:

Then suddenly I found myself away from home and being ordered about by nuns. They were very strict about what we could and could not read. Even Wuthering Heights was questioned for being too racy. (Jeremy Taylor)

The Daily Progress interviews Barbara Heritage, Assistant Director and Curator of Collections with the Rare Book School, housed at Alderman Library at the University of Virginia and member of the Brontë Society;  Hello, better reads! thinks that Jane Eyre is far more darker than Wuthering Heights (an interesting post by the way); Brontë Weather Project has read Wide Sargasso Sea; The Clothes Make the Girl has traced an Slovenian translation of Jane Eyre; The Brontë Society's website publishes pictures of Dr Lucy Worsley's talk at the Parsonage.

Literary Prize De Leo - Brontë 2013 Results

For the second time a National Literary prize dedicated to the Brontës, their lives, works and places was organized in Italy by Prof. Maddalena De Leo with great success. Entries had to be 1) poems 2) letters 3) drabbles to/from one of the Brontë sisters or characters.

Prof. Maddalena De Leo and other Italian Brontë scholars chose the first three winners of each section as follows:

The three winning poetry 2013 entries are:

Amore di ruggine by Tiziana Tunzi from Bari
(a melancholy poem where Heathcliff and Cathy’s unlucky love has only left place to rust everywhere)

‘si è fatta avanti’ by Francesco Sicilia from Agropoli (Sa)
(Emily’s death seen as a sort of mystic sacrifice)

Non ti lascerò mai by Davide Lucarelli from Fiano Romano (RM)
(Cathy’s ghost whispering tender words to Heathcliff telling him she will never leave him )

The three winning letters 2013 are:

Carissima Catherine by Alessia Ranieri from Rome
(a moving letter to Catherine from Heathcliff during his three years’ silence declaring his everlasting love and asking why she disowned him )

Carissima Emily by Serena Gobbo from S.Stino di Livenza (VE)
(a letter from Charlotte to Emily written while at Stonegappe to ask about family matters at Haworth)

Lettera a Charlotte by Aurora Bardi from Majano (UD)
(a letter to Charlotte from the young writer herself who empathically shares her world and feelings)

The three winning drabbles 2013 are:

Visione by Ivonne Defant from Terlago (Trento)
(The description of the inspirational process leading to the writing of Isabella’s escape episode)

Anima vagante by Angela D’Angelo from Ascea Marina (SA)
(Heathcliff and Cathy eternal pursuit in and out of this life)

Il buio che mi completa by Carola Boniotti from Trezzo sull’Adda (MI)
(the description of the moment of Charlotte’s death reviving her happy and sad life memories )

The nine winners will be given Brontë DVDs, audiobooks and bookmarks as prizes.

The anthology ‘BRONTËANA’ containing all the works sent by the authors for the prize will be edited and published in a short time by Prof. De Leo.

Jane has a serious backbone

Louis Karchin's Jane Eyre opera project is again in the news because three scenes from the first act have been presented at the Fort Worth Opera Frontiers initiative. We read on TheaterJones:

“The challenges are many. [Getting interest from] directors and opera companies in producing new opera means that one must already have a convincing rendition of at least a good part of the work,” said Louis Karchin, composer of one of the works chosen this year, Jane Eyre. “And of course, to receive a convincing rendition, someone in the opera world must already be convinced of the work and create conditions for a compelling recording. So there's a little Catch-22 about the situation. The more you work in the genre and get to know people, the easier it is; but for very large projects, you're asking for a sizable commitment from a company—so it will not happen overnight.” (...)
Jane Eyre is a daunting undertaking for the operatic stage, but composer Louis Karchin and librettist Diane Osen are writing a full-scale setting of the Brontë novel. This is also a work in the neo-romantic side of the fence, as behooves the subject. To keep in the Frontiers time limit, we saw three scenes from the beginning of act one. They are off to a good start and many in the audience were wishing that we could hear some more. (It is my recollection that these three scenes were all that had been completed at the time of this performance.)
Quote from Karchin: “Jane Eyre is a large project—an opera in three acts for 13 singers and orchestra. During the past year, I've been able to complete the composition of the work including the final orchestration. The Frontiers Project, although not a full-scale production of the opera, was certainly incentive to push ahead, even with competing projects on my desk with full realizations looming. It meant someone in the opera world was on the same wavelength as me, and there was some confirmation that what I was doing was worthwhile and reaching other people. This is very necessary in the world of the arts. I try to help younger composers this way, and it's great to be helped from time to time, also.” (...)
Karchin added that the Frontiers experience is important because it provides that first step. “I hope it gives my opera, Jane Eyre, some additional positive momentum and exposure,” he said. “Also, the feedback aspect is very important. Composers work out of sight in their houses or apartments writing this stuff; it's easy to overlook some significant aspect of the project, and hearing comments and suggestions from people who have gone through the process is invaluable.” (Gregory Sullivan Isaacs)

The Columbus Dispatch talks about the new Available Light Theatre Jane Eyre production:

“It’s truly a fever dream,” director Acacia Duncan said.
“ Jane Eyre is a great love story, but it’s also got danger and drama. Love isn’t easy in this story; love is fraught with death.”
Daniel Elihu Kramer adapted his 95-minute one-act from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel about a lonely, self-reliant British woman who falls in love with her rich employer while serving as governess to his daughter.
“There’s a special energy to the story because it feels like a new idea that a woman demands the right to tell her own story and finds her opportunity to do so,” said Kramer, who plans to attend the opening-night show with his wife and 11-year-old son. (...)
“There was a time when people expected to grow up and live their lives where they were born, but that was never a possibility for Jane Eyre,” Kramer said. “Because she is without a home and is trying to find and make a home for herself, that becomes a very powerful and modern theme for us: The need to make your own home.”
Robyn Rae Stype plays the young Jane opposite Michelle Schroeder as the Narrator (the older Jane).
“Jane has a serious backbone,” Stype said.
“She doesn’t have a home or any close relatives to turn to, so Jane seeks employment in a place where she has to learn to provide for herself.”
Stype, 22, plays the title character as a child at the age of 10, then from 18 to 20 as an emerging young adult.
“Jane has been pretty much her own best friend for much of her life and learned over and over again not to rely on others,” she said. “That makes her extremely wary in new situations.
“Her first experience of having romantic feelings for another is with Rochester, someone who also has learned that he can’t really trust anyone. . . . A lot of their challenge is lack of communication and lack of honesty.” (...)
What makes Kramer’s version of Jane Eyre distinctive — and quite different from Pride & Prejudice, Duncan said — is its dreamlike atmosphere and strong central voice.
“The play and book of Jane Eyre,” she said, “are really about how we remember things and how the act of remembering is intensely personal and very important.” (...)
“The voice in which Jane Eyre tells her story is so intimate, reflecting her desire to say, ‘I have a right to a place in the world; I have a right to be happy,’ ” he said.
“Her belief that she deserves to make her own choices and have a home where she can love and be loved is part of what gets me going.” (Michael Grossberg)

The New York Times reviews the film Augustine and delivers the following not-easy-to-forget statement:

You wonder if the film will resemble a lost Brontë novel or “The Story of O.” (A.O. Scott)

Paterson Joseph talks about British black actors on TV in The Guardian:

Finally, it cannot be a coincidence that we had a year of great period dramas and a dearth of black talent represented in the subsequent awards. As I know from my own experience, I may have the skill and the training to wield, say, a Brontë hero's finely turned phrases, but it'll be a cold day in hell when I'm even in the room for the Mr Darcy auditions.

We wonder if he remembers that precisely the most recent Brontë film featured a black actor playing a Brontë 'hero': James Howson in Wuthering Heights 2011.

The New York Times interviews the writer Hilary Mantel:

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
When I was 9, I was given a set of slightly abridged classics for Christmas, and the same again when I was 10. My mother got them from a mail-order catalog. We weren’t a household that owned many books so it was a novelty to fill a whole shelf. There were plain cloth bindings and no pictures. (That’s just the way I like it; I make my own pictures, thanks.) That’s when I became enthralled by R. L. Stevenson, and failed to like Dickens, and met the Brontës. They were clever abridgments, too, as I came to realize when I read the full texts later. (Imagine, “Jane Eyre” without the embarrassing bits.)

No, we can't imagine it... and we don't want imagine it. (Furthermore, let us add that there is no such thing as a clever abridgment).

Financial Chronicle talks about one time wonder books:

However, there are some authors whose single great success becomes their only one. Usually, it is death that arrests their forward movement, as was the case with Margaret Mitchell, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Gone with the Wind, Emily Brontë with her classic Wuthering Heights and Anna Sewell who wrote Black Beauty at 51 and died of hepatitis shortly thereafter.  (Zehra Naqvi)

USA Today's Happy Ever After interviews the author Mary Costello:

Writers like the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell wove endless attractive variations on the manly theme, and the best thing is, these heroes translate brilliantly to TV and film. Who hasn't drooled over modern-day Darcys, Colonel Brandons, Rochesters or Heathcliffs? (Joyce Lamb)

The Times, The Guardian or BBC News report the death of the actor Aubrey Woods who was Joseph in Wuthering Heights 1970; Inside Life reviews the Wild & Wanton edition of Wuthering Heights; Amanda White shares some more of her Haworth paintings; Ayushee's, Espirit con destino likes Ralph Fiennes in Wuthering Heights 1992.

A Talk in Hawes and Haworth 1940s Weekend

Today at the Dales Countryside Museum:

Date: Friday, 17 May 2013
Time: 19:30
As part of the Friends of the Museum lecture programme Isobel Stirk will talk about "Life in Haworth at the time of the Brontës".

Dales Countryside Museum
Station Yard
Hawes
North Yorkshire
DL8 3NT

EDIT: There is another talk going on in the York area according to The Handy Mag:

The Brontës behind closed doors, Haxby & Wigginton U3A
A talk by Ms Pat Osborne -(all the scandal) Wigginton Recreation Hall, 2pm, £2 Members / £3 Visitors Including Tea & Biscuits.

And this weekeend in Haworth is the 1940s weekend. The Brontë Parsonage joins the celebration:

This year the Brontë Parsonage Museum is getting into the swing with Haworth's famous 1940s weekend (May 18/19) with a full programme of events all weekend commemorating the wartime years. 

How did the Brontë Parsonage Museum survive the Second World War with national treasures intact?

Where were soldiers billeted?

Who left the Parsonage to fight – and who never returned?
All these questions and many more are answered in the talks ‘A 40s Parsonage Childhood’ and ‘Parsonage Under Fire’ by bestselling author Ann Dinsdale, Museum Director Professor Ann Sumner, and Parsonage Education Officer Sue Newby, sharing memories of the Mitchell family, who lived in the Museum and protected it throughout the war (May 18, 2pm; May 19, 11.30am and 2pm).
Visitors can listen to the fascinating boyhood memories captured in a recording of Eric Mitchell, last baby born at the Parsonage, who grew up sharing his home with thousands of Brontë fans – and whose family sacrificed their beloved son Raymond  to war (all weekend).
Other 40s-themed events include:
· Free drop-in workshop for all ages teaching a popular 40s skill: making felt flower corsages. Useful for hiding holes in woollies! (May 18, 11am-4.30pm)
· Waltzing back in time to sounds of classic Huddersfield-based brass quintet H-D Brass on the Parsonage lawn (May 18, 2-4.30pm)

More information on The Telegraph & Argus.

Celtic Jane and other news

Picture source

The Inverness Courier features filmmaker Clive Malcouronne who

is now working on Celtic Jane, an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre relocated to inter-war Scotland, and has already shot scenes for the film at the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore and Kilmorack Village Hall with the help of pupils from Inverness performing arts school TFX.
However, to help raise funds for his most ambitious project to date, Malcouronne plans to hold a film workshop at his home near Kirkhill over the weekend of Friday 24th to Sunday 26th May.
Malcouronne will introduce each of the chosen films from a filmmaker’s perspective and will discuss the lessons to be learned from them with the workshop participants. [...]
The names of each participant will also be included in the final credits of Celtic Jane as a friend and sponsor of the film.
"If this is successful, further weekend film workshops will be organised during the summer, autumn and even later during the winter period," Malcouronne added.
"A short movie made by those attending may follow in weekly seminars later on."
In the meantime, work progresses on Celtic Jane, with Malcouronne planning a charity screening in aid of Save the Children in Inverness once the film is complete.
"We had a cast of approximately 30 at Kilmorack Village Hall to depict the harsh and severe events of her first day there," Malcouronne said.
"The schedule was exhausting, but it looks dramatic and convincing."

The Telegraph and Argus reports that there have been more stone slab thefts in Thornton:

Jenny Oliver, of Thornton Road, said she and other residents were concerned about the safety of the expensive stone in this conservation area, which is protected because of its architectural and historical interest.
She has suggested installing CCTV cameras, particularly on Market Street, in a bid to protect them.
She said: “These paving stones at the central cross roads of Thornton Road and Kipping Lane had been raised around the outside ready to be stolen.
“It took two weeks for anything to be done about it after numerous calls to the Council.
“This is not just an isolated incident. The front pathway passing the Brontë birthplace and the adjacent two houses have had about ten slabs taken in recent weeks."

Still locally, the Brontë Parsonage Facebook Page reports the following:

Picture source

At long last our new, specially-woven curtains - as close as we can get to those ordered by Charlotte for the room - are up! Made from union cloth and dyed crimson, Charlotte was unhappy with the colour. The good news is, we love them!

They certainly look impressive.

A former headteacher discusses in the Guardian's Teacher Network Michael Gove's dismissal of Twilight as appropriate reading for teenagers.

Later in my career as a head of department I remember conversations with my team about how we could ensure the pupils had a varied, stimulating reading diet, and how we could make Shakespeare, Austen and the Brontës, for example, accessible and as enjoyable as possible. I also remember dynamic lessons with pupils of all ability studying texts such as Of Mice and Men and The Lord of the Flies. I have always considered eclecticism to be a good thing, and an eclectic diet healthy. I'm not sure why Gove was so dismissive of everything written after the turn of the century. (Jill Berry)

Romance writer Mary Costello discusses vulnerable heroes on USA Today's Happy Ever After:

But we still crave contact with those gentlemanly heroes of yore who provided us with the template for the romantic hero we admire today. Writers like the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell wove endless attractive variations on the manly theme, and the best thing is, these heroes translate brilliantly to TV and film. Who hasn't drooled over modern-day Darcys, Colonel Brandons, Rochesters or Heathcliffs?

La Croix (France) mentions Kate Morton's admiration for the Brontës.

And PLOS's Speaking of Medicine reviews the book Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum in which she

uses known cultural figures, such as John Keats and Charlotte Brontë, to better show the reader the complete hold that tuberculosis can have on a person’s life. (Jasmine Grenier and Madhukar Pai)

However, Charlotte Brontë is not believed to have died from TB.

Ekstra Bladet (Denmark) features the national Eurovision song contest singer, Emmelie de Forest, who is a fan of both Kate Bush and Wuthering Heights, the novel:

Hvad læser du?- Jeg læser både romaner, krimier og biografier. Min yndlingsbog er Stormfulde Højder af Emily Brontë. Det er en mørk historie, der handler mere om hævn end om kærlighed, og mit album er faktisk meget inspireret af den. [...]
Hvem er dit største idol?- Det er Kate Bush. Hendes måde at synge på og være på kan jeg godt lide. Hun er sådan lidt underlig, og hendes tekstunivers er meget inspireret af naturen. Hun er en gennemført fantastisk artist. (Translation)

The South Bend Tribune features a local library media specialist and teacher of the year who lists Jane Eyre among her favourite books.