In case you haven’t noticed, the world is Brontë mad

We were wondering what had happened on Wednesday when the future of Red House was debated by Kirklees Council. According to Dewsbury Reporter,

Kirklees Council says “conversations are ongoing” over the future of the site in Gomersal following enquiries from what it describes as “interested parties”.
And campaigners fighting to stop parts of the site from being turned into housing have been assured that no final decision will be taken until all potential opportunities to retain the building have been exhausted.
The revelation came after supporters in Huddersfield Town Hall presented a petition calling for the museum, which has connections to Charlotte Brontë, to be given over to the Red House Heritage Group.
Kirklees Council closed Red House almost three years ago as part of a reaction to Government austerity cuts.
It turned down three asset transfer requests and announced in September this year that the building and grounds were to be put on the market.
In a hard-hitting and impassioned address Caroline Goodwill exhorted members to stand up for people who had signed the petition – and who wanted action on the former museum.
She said: “We are not expecting you to reopen Red House but we the Red House Heritage Group wish to take it over in some form or another and work with Kirklees to save and develop this wonderful heritage resource.”
She referred to the 17th century house as “a perfect time capsule” that demonstrated how the Industrial Revolution had happened and underlined the importance of the wool trade to the borough.
She also underlined Red House’s connections to Charlotte Brontë, calling it the second most important Brontë site globally after the family parsonage in Haworth.
She added: “In case you haven’t noticed, the world is Brontë mad.
“Would another five or six houses on the Red House site make such an important difference to the housing stock? Is it worth destroying this national and international site?”
For the council Clr Graham Turner said the decision to close Red House had been very difficult.
Three applications for the museum to be the subject of a community asset transfer missed the relevant criteria to move forward – one by just a single point. All were rejected.
But he pledged to look closely at any new bids.
“I will promise you this evening that we will not sell the building until we have exhausted all the potential opportunities to either retain the building without a large subsidy or complete a successful asset transfer, or by it being taken over by an alternative charity or public body.
“Any positive outcome can only be achieved if any interested parties talk to us.” (Tony Earnshaw)

We hope that he means it and that it is true, but to us it does sound like they will sell it in the end as they have always meant to do.

Still in Brontë country, The Telegraph and Argus reports that Keighley public library is at risk of being closed, too.

Councillor Rebecca Poulsen (Cons, Worth Valley) was referring to concerns that the town's library might face the chop under planned £1.05 million cuts to Bradford's Museum and Library service.
The Council announced the cuts earlier this year, and is soon to start a public consultation into how the cuts will impact services.
Officers have said the Council aims to keep all its libraries and museums open, but the budget cuts would require major changes to the way they operate.
In Keighley concerns had been raised that the town would lose its Carnegie library after a number of online rumours. The Council has proposed the facility on North Street could become a community hub - retaining the library service and including other services and facilities.
Cllr Poulson represents Haworth, where the Bronte sisters wrote their most famous works, and on Tuesday raised a motion calling for greater protection of the District's libraries.
She said: "It would be a disgrace, it would degrade Keighley in the eyes of the world, if there was no library in a town just three miles down the road from where so many famous novels were written." (Chris Young)

And now for something constructive (as opposed to the destruction above) as Keighley News reports that a bridge over the River Worth has been rebuilt after 35 years.

It lies just below Ponden Reservoir, with the source of the River Worth only a few hundred yards past Ponden Hall at the top side of the reservoir.
[Ponden Hall owner Richard Trainer] said there had been a bridge at the site for many years, and he and Barbara had long planned to revive the crossing.
He said: “When Barbara’s sister died in February we thought the bridge would make a suitable memorial.
“It’s on all the old maps. In the old days, workers would go across the bridge to get to the mill. They used to have a vegetable patch on the other side.
“The bridge fell down about 35 years ago and was never repaired. I think when Ponden Hall became a shop they didn’t want people playing on a rickety old bridge.
Richard said the bridge had attracted a lot of interest in recent weeks.
He added: “It’s a nice addition to what we have here. We have a campsite, bed-and-breakfast, and we have a café that’s open four days a week.
“We have parking at the mill and we are the closest to one of the Brontë sites, so we get a lot of people coming for walks. The bridge gives them another place to go for a walk.
“The bridge leads to a picnic area. It’s quite popular – stable and childproof. Children are often playing and collecting things along the river.” (David Knights)

On the other side of the Atlantic, there are a couple of reviews of The Joffrey Ballet's take on Jane Eyre with Cathy Marston's choreography.

Among the great pleasures of 19th-century novels are their length, their breadth, the deep dives into characters’ lives and into the social fabric of the time. It’s almost suicidal to try to stage these stories in just over two hours. Yet that’s what British choreographer Cathy Marston did with Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 Jane Eyre, in a 2016 evening-length ballet now remounted by the Joffrey at the Auditorium Theatre. It’s an act of love, and of daring—for good and bad, a contemporary feminist take on the story.
Eliminating all traces of costume drama, Marston emphasizes the novel’s bleak universality. Patrick Kinmonth’s painted drops show sloping, intersecting lines suggesting lonely hills, the moors, a distant horizon on a vast open plain. His pared costumes merely hint at the period. Philip Feeney’s score likewise defers to the choreography, as Marston steps outside the bounds of classical ballet to highlight the characters’ distinctive gestures. [...]
Emotionally, Jane is already evolved enough to interact with Rochester on equal terms. In their first duet, they’re clearly dancing one of the novel’s bantering, witty, occasionally combative early conversations. Every subsequent duet fully limns a new phase. When Jane saves Rochester’s life, pulling him from his burning bed, and they dance in their nightclothes, there’s a huge jump in intimacy: intellectual attraction has become fiery desire. The highly athletic, technically difficult proposal scene, near the top of the second act, feels artificial, forced—maybe because Rochester already has a wife: Bertha, the mad Creole in the attic. When Jane, about to be married, finds out about Bertha and tosses her bridal veil aside like the rag it is, their duet is marked by distance and avoidance.
Though the early duets in the second act falter, and the story of Jane’s would-be husband, St. John Rivers, feels cursory, dutiful, Marston returns to form in the final duet, when Rochester’s blindness completely changes the power dynamic between him and Jane. Just before the quiet end, Marston inflects Jane’s usual isolating, self-protective gesture—clasping her own chest or head—to suggest the mutual support between these two. When she stands with her back to Rochester, touching once again her hands to her face, he takes one of them in his and places her other behind his neck, forming a loop, a never-ending circuit of love.
While Marston pretty much nails the love story, her sometimes heavy-handed treatment of the novel’s feminism, embodied in the literal manhandling of Jane by the ten characters she calls the D-Men, comes perilously close to tiresome, their scenes continually hammering home Jane’s victimization. Predictably, she’s a rag doll in their hands at first but increasingly defies them, finally trouncing them all—one by one, action-heroine style—in an unsurprising final confrontation.
A bigger problem, especially since Marston emphasizes Brontë’s feminism, is her treatment of Bertha, who has her own story of abuse by men, a story Jean Rhys tells in her 1966 novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys not only imagines Rochester’s cruelty to Bertha—a cruelty visible but unacknowledged onstage here—but exposes its source in imperialist, racist beliefs. A baked-in problem, Bertha (Christine Rocas, excellent on opening night) is simply a monster here, as usual. If you’re going to be a feminist, care for all women.
Marston’s feminism feels most genuine when she celebrates female friendship in duets and trios that comfort Jane, give her a community. On opening night, Lucia Connolly danced the dithery, skittery Mrs. Fairfax to perfection, as Cara Marie Gary did the hyperkinetic Adele. As Young Jane, Yumi Kanazawa was touchingly vulnerable and defiantly strong. Greig Matthews made a great moody Rochester, but his partnering of Amanda Assucena’s Jane made me fear for her safety. She brought precise technique and fearless flamboyance to bear on a Jane powerful in every scene, whether standing silently watching or dancing her heart out. (Laura Molzahn on Chicago Reader)

It unfolds as something of a fever dream as Jane (with a sublime performance by Amanda Assucena), envisions her younger self (exquisitely danced by Yumi Kanazawa, who clearly has star quality), and recalls her lonely, abusive childhood as an orphan. Grudgingly taken in by her haughty aunt (played to perfection by April Daly), she is battered and bullied by her spoiled cousins (the excellent Xavier Nunez, Yuma Iwai and Valerie Chaykina), and then sent off to a Dickensian boarding school for orphaned girls (ideally conjured with nothing but wooden stools and slates). Her only friend is Helen Burns (a lovely turn by Brooke Linford), but she soon dies. It is only when she begins to teach the girls that she begins to gain the confidence that will serve her well.
Then comes a life-altering transition as Janes takes the job of governess at the home of Edward Rochester (wonderfully danced and played by Greig Matthews in what is unquestionably a breakthrough performance), the wealthy, worldly, darkly brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
Jane is welcomed by Mr. Rochester’s kind but perpetually nervous housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (a spot-on turn by Lucia Connolly). And she is instantly adored by her exuberant little pupil, Adele Varens (an irresistibly playful Cara Marie Gary), who is Rochester’s ward. As for Rochester, who has some very dark secrets hidden in his closet, he is initially quite dismissive of Jane. (In one searing gesture made while seated in a giant armchair, he sharply extends his leg as if to corral her.) But gradually he begins to realize she is a woman with a steely spine. And not only does a certain push-pull chemistry between the two begin to develop, but he also even fends off the insistently seductive moves of the socialite Blanche (beautiful Jeraldine Mendoza), and proposes marriage to Jane instead.
Of course there is no escaping that dark secret: a wife, Bertha Mason (in a riveting, crash-and-burn turn by Christine Rocas), a raging madwoman with suicidal impulses who is kept locked away in an attic room and is cared for by the harried and notably tipsy Grace Poole (an inspired cameo by Dara Holmes). Once that story is revealed, a traumatized Jane runs away into the moors where she is rescued by the Rev. St. John Rivers (the always outstanding Edson Barbosa), who quickly proposes marriage – an offer she instantly rejects, knowing that Rochester is the man who has captured her soul, and that she must return to him.
Bertha’s attempt to burn the house down leaves the madwoman dead and Rochester blind. But Jane is determined to live out her life with him, and the remarkably moving pas de deux that reunites them suggests they are finally clearly “seeing” each other in the most compelling way.
Throughout, Assucena’s dancing is sweeping and flawless, including when she is haunted by memories of being bullied by a group of men in creamy topcoats who torment her and toss her from one to the other with terrifying force until she finally learns to fight back. But it is the easy radiance and complexity of Assucena’s inner life, and the most natural ways in which she embodies Jane’s growth and change and ever-shifting confidence, anguish and confusion, that make the crucial difference. And she and Greig make a most interesting pair.
Marston’s character-defining choreography and dramatic direction give each of the many other dancers in the ballet a highly specific language of movement, and without exception they have become fluent in it, suggesting both the inner psychological landscape and the outer reality. (Note: Three casts will alternate in the leading roles during the ballet’s two-week run, including Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels, and Anais Buenos and Dylan Gutierrez.)
The sets and costumes by Patrick Kinmonth (who also collaborated with Marston on the ballet’s scenario) are spare but highly effective, with delicately painted curtains to suggest the landscape, and little more than chairs used as defensive weapons and seats of power (or the lack of it).
And as always, music director Scott Speck and his impeccable Chicago Philharmonic musicians are essential in bringing the work to vivid life and ideally synchronizing with the dancers. (Hedy Weiss on WTTW News)

An English teacher who hates the classics on Book Riot:

Similarly, the feminist in me just cannot with Wuthering Heights. I often see this hailed as one of the most romantic books all the time. Eye roll. What is romantic about this book? Heathcliff is deeply troubled and abusive. Cathy is simpering and weak. There’s also something a bit incestuous about the vibe. Is that the definition of romance we want to instill in the next generation? (Lily Dunn)

And yet according to Aspen Daily News, Wuthering Heights is not a classic or a romance but a thriller (!).

Thrillers with female heroines are hardly an emerging area in fiction (think “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Bronte), but in the last several years — with the publications of the bestselling “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn in 2012 and “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins in 2015 — it has reclaimed book publishing. (Maura Masters)

Sin embargo (Mexico) features the group Libros B4 Tipos formed by 14 booktubers.

Andrea hace breves intervenciones para hablar de autoras. Su recomendación tiene nombres conocidos como Jane Austen o las hermanas Brontë (Emily, Charlotte y Anne), sin embargo, asegura que a pesar de ser clásicas es necesario seguir leyéndolas porque durante siglos han permanecido relegadas por el género que escribieron.
“Debemos rescatar, por ejemplo, a Jane Austen que siempre la he visto relegada porque creen que solo escribe cosas románticas como si eso fuera un género menor, igual que las Brontë. Porque todas ellas en su tiempo rompieron los esquemas. Necesitamos rescatar a las autoras clásicas y no relegar a escritoras de novelas románticas cuando no es un género menor o algo exclusivo de mujeres“, explica Andrea. (Patricia Ramírez) (Translation)

La opinión de Málaga (Spain) reviews the translated poems of Emily Brontë.

Es esta 'Poesía completa' una oportunidad de descubrir a una autora que supo llegar con sus palabras a los rincones más profundos del alma humana, aquellos en los que se esconden los sentimientos que no queremos compartir, las zozobras que nos atormentan cuando amamos, cuando quieres y no te quieren, cuando la felicidad es un anhelo que está a la vez tan lejos pero tan cerca.
Un universo propio es el que construye Emily Brontë en sus poemas, un mundo que se pasea por ese otro mundo imaginario, Gondal, que un día se inventó con sus hermanas. En la poesía de Emily hay no sólo amor y sentimientos, también se encuentran esos otros elementos tan comunes en la escritura surgida de las islas británicas, una naturaleza bronca, desafiante, convertida en metáfora de los miedos propios y ajenos, pero a la vez florida, verde, exhuberante, como la tierra nutrida por la lluvia. Es el petricor, ese olor único a tierra mojada que es a la vez fin e inicio. Mujer adelantada a su época, como sus hermanas, nunca es tarde para descubrir su poesía, lectura otoñal para recordar a una autora difícil de igualar. (Virginia Guzmán) (Translation)

La casa de El (Spain) finds echoes of the Brontës and Jane 'Austin' (sic) in the graphic novel The Black Holes by Borja González.

‘The Black Holes’ mezcla con acierto el ruidoso espíritu punk con la ciencia ficción, el relato gótico heredero de las hermanas Bronte y la elegancia victoriana de fuerte espíritu femenino que podría estar ideada por Jane Austin. (Santiago Negro) (Translation)

The London Economic carries the story of 'two unrelated students called Bronte Taylor, born one day apart, graduated from same English Literature course this week'. The accompanying picture shows them both holding a Penguin Books edition of Wuthering Heights. El País (Spain) recommends Adrienne Rich's reading of Charlotte Brontë's works. The Univerity News has just discovered Diane Setterfield's 2006 novel The Thirteenth Tale and recommends it it will ' charm your “Jane Eyre”-loving hearts.'

Iran, Korea, Kurdistan and the Caribbean

New Brontë-related scholar works:

The chapter of an upcoming book:

Tahmasebian, Kayvan and Gould, Rebecca Ruth
The Translatability of Love: The Romance Genre and the Prismatic Reception of Jane Eyre in Twentieth-Century Iran (September 27, 2019).
Close Reading a Global Novel: Prismatic Jane Eyre, Forthcoming.
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3460531 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3460531

This chapter examines how twentieth century Iranian readers situated Jane Eyre within the classical genre of romance literature (adabiyāt-i ʿāshiqāna), originating from the tradition of love narratives in verse (ʿishq-nāma) pioneered by the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami Ganjevi. While romance is only one among several of the original Jane Eyre’s modes of generic belonging, translation and reception of Jane Eyre into Persian facilitated the novel’s generic re-calibration. We show how the prohibition on romance literature following the 1979 Iranian revolution made way for foreign classics such as Jane Eyre to be read as romances in the classical sense of the term. Drawing on morphological and narratological studies on the structure of the Persian romance, we read Jane Eyre through the lens of Nizami’s romances in our reconstruction of the Iranian reader’s horizon of expectation. This research establishes how prismatic Persian translations contributed to the novel’s generic transformation of world literary history.

A paper published in Korea,

The Negotiation of Multiple Audiences of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Kang, Meeyoung(Sookmyung Women’s University)
신영어영문학회신영어영문학신영어영문학 제73집2019.08241 - 260

This study analyzes the way a novelist interacts with multiple audiences and finally produces a literary text by showing that Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is an outcome of the complex and dynamic interaction of readers, writers, and texts. Standing against the linear interpretation that Jane Eyre is a feminist text, showing spiritual growth of a female character, Jane Eyre, or reflection of British imperialism and white-centered feminism, I argue that both the positive and negative interpretations of Jane Eyre derive from Bronte’s negotiation of the corporate politics of multiple readers. To show this process in an efficient way, I analyze Jane Eyre in terms of its relationship with the different types of audiences: the imagined readers Brontë fictionalizes in her mind,
readers in the text addressed as “readers”, and external readers who actually read the novel.

Another one in... of all places, Kurdistan:

The Representation of Marital Abuse in the Brontës’ Literary Writings: A Feminist ApproachBekhal Bayz Kareem
Knowledge University Erbil/ Kurdistan Region

This research paper examines the way that the Brontë sisters write about one of the most important issues in a person’s life, the decision of marriage and how it can lead to a woman being abused by her chosen partner.  This paper aims at proving how the Brontë sister’s trilogy:  Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have been used by the authors themselves to criticize the Victorian repressive marriage which is lacking love.  The subject matter within the paper claims that each one of the chosen texts shows how the sibling authors have similar opinions or tendencies regarding the above-mentioned issue and how they disapprove of the traditional marriage, by which women become oppressed.  The selected texts are regarded as early feminist writings by critics and scholars for their depiction of marital abuse.  By conducting research combining social backgrounds and close reading, the paper sets out to focus on the character’s mistakes regarding marriage like Bertha in Jane Eyre, Isabella in Wuthering Heights, and Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.   The study points out that the chosen females in the writings are depicted to be passive characters.   To establish this identity, the study illustrates that how their mythical principles on which their marriage based leads to them being victims of marital abuse. 

A thesis:

Entre Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent et La Migration des Cœurs : La Féminité Créolisée chez Maryse Condé
Eleanor Frances Matson
Whitman College, 2019

Dans un entretien sur La Migration des Cœurs, Maryse Condé a caractérisé son choix de transposer un texte de Emily Brontë de la façon suivante, car elle avait envie d’illuminer la connexion entre Brontë et les femmes antillaises : « Car, en fait, il y a quelque chose des sœurs Brontë qui parle à des femmes caribéennes, de n’importe quelle couleur, de n’importe quel âgé… » (Wolff, 76).1
 Son accent sur les femmes caribéennes soulève des questions sur le rôle du genre et les raisons pour lesquelles Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent pourrait parler aux femmes caribéennes. Cependant, on peut demander aussi comment Condé transpose la féminité qu’on voit dans l’hypotexte de Brontë à celui de La Migration des Cœurs et quels sont les effets de cette transposition sur le texte.

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Jane Eyre: the bullied girl of ghastly circumstance

Chicago Sun Times gives 4 stars to The Joffrey Ballet's take on Jane Eyre with Cathy Marston's choreography.

On a dreamy, half-lit canvas at the Auditorium Theatre, the bullied girl of ghastly circumstance becomes the subject of an achingly intense and lyrical love story. There are nightmarish demons and brilliant special effects, too, as one might expect from a situation that twice goes up in flames.
Set designer Patrick Kinmouth collaborated with Marston on a scenario that picks up with the Brontë story as Jane flees from some vague demonic terror (male dancers in a locust-like horde, who return to bedevil her from time to time). The young woman collapses, delirious, and her story then unravels as a memory tale, beginning with her delivery as a newly orphaned girl to reluctant relatives now stuck with her and her upbringing.
The 12 scenes slide from one to another quickly thanks to a highly successful score that fits the time of the story. The music is a smart mix from Brontë’s era, by Franz Schubert and (Felix’s sister) Fanny Mendelssohn, cleverly stitched together and embellished by Philip Feeney, and performed by music director Scott Speck and the Chicago Philharmonic with particularly soulful contributions from winds and piano. [...]
Amanda Assucena and Greig Matthews, splendid as the 19-year-old Jane and Rochester, were engrossing to watch as they grew closer, first stiffly as acquaintances with the traditional balance of power assumed, then tentatively, as the situation evolved, into new minefields of interest, jealousy and suspicion. Their powerful pas de deux at the end of the first act released, at least temporarily, a flood of inner conflict in the wake of a mysterious disaster that pointed to even more trouble ahead.
Much of the interaction between these two was expressive of the push and pull of private thoughts, with striking, often quirky gestures that linger in the memory. The so-called D-Men, a corps of male dancers representing Jane’s recurring demons with a slithering vocabulary of insidious sideways moves, were unforgettable. (Nancy Malitz)

Chicago Tribune gives it 3 stars.

As Jane, danced Wednesday by Amanda Assucena, fights off the D-Men, a men’s corps representing Jane’s thoughts and inner demons, she collapses in exhaustion. St. John Rivers (Edson Barbosa) rescues her, and carries her home to recover with his sisters. Perched on a raised platform upstage, Jane has a sort of fever dream, a flashback, and the story of Jane’s childhood unfolds before her: her parents’ death, a brief tenure living with her contemptuous aunt and cousins, and the tragic death of her best friend while stationed at Lowood, a draconian reformatory school.
It is a breakout moment for Yumi Kanazawa as Young Jane, who came to Joffrey in 2016 and, until now, has spent most of her time in the ensemble. Kanazawa thoroughly captures the depth of her character. Young Jane is a child wise beyond her years, continually forced to grapple with when to assert herself, and when to obey.
Yet she’s still a child, even as Assucena takes over the plot for Kanazawa as the 19-year-old who leaves her post as a teacher at Lowood to serve as governess at Thornfield Hall. It’s the 1840s, after all, and the conflicting roles of morality, religiosity and passion in Jane’s life are a central theme.
Brontë asks these questions again and again in her great work of literature, predominantly in the soliloquies written as a conversation with the reader. Marston deals with this choreographic challenge — turning inner conflict into dance — through her Greek chorus of men and by establishing gestural motifs for each main character.
Rivers’ body language alludes to his piety and pragmatism. Jane, quite often (maybe too often), presses a palm downward as if to bring about composure, or crosses her forearms around her face. Though Marston borrows a lot from modern dance — fluidity of the torso, copious floor work and a pinch of tanztheater, for example — these motifs harken more to ballet’s conventional use of pantomime than modern dance’s affinity for gesture.
Rochester, danced by Greig Matthews, is as complicated as any of them, his mannerisms at first giving off a pretentious, disinterested vibe. He brushes Jane off with a flit of his fingers, or apathetically juts a pointed foot in the air. It soon becomes clear that Rochester is deeply smitten by Jane, invested in a flirtatious chase for her heart, but obviously conflicted by his “situation” in the attic. [...]
Christine Rocas is simply extraordinary as Bertha Mason, the crazed wife Rochester keeps locked away as he pursues Jane. This is Rocas like we’ve never seen her before; hair messily strewn about, barefoot in a tattered red dress, she dances with menacing reckless abandon. Bertha has a propensity for violence, setting fires to Thornfield Hall and biting Grace Poole, Bertha’s beleaguered attendant fantastically epitomized by Dara Holmes. Rocas’ final solo, amidst the smoke and flames of Thornfield’s final undoing, is a thing of passion, as Rocas gropes at Rochester while simultaneously gauging his eyes out.
For Assucena and Matthews, “Jane Eyre” is a tour de force, but the smaller roles do not escape notice. There’s Rocas, Kanazawa, Barbosa and Holmes. April Daly plays the austere Mrs. Reed, Jane’s aunt, and Cara Marie Gary is the lovingly meddlesome Adele, Jane’s charge. Lucia Connolly is the wacky and devoted housekeeper of Thornfield Hall, Mrs. Fairfax, and Blanche Ingram (Jeraldine Mendoza) is Rochester’s audacious would-be love interest, if he weren’t so infatuated with Jane Eyre. Even Alberto Velazquez as the vicar and Brooke Linford as Helen Burns, Jane’s best friend who perishes from consumption, have moments, not of virtuosity, but as vital figures who serve to advance the story. (Lauren Warnecke)

Book Riot recommends several new 'Must-Read Mystery & Thrillers' including

The Vanished Bride
Ellis has brilliantly reimagined the Brontë sisters as detectors and everything in this novel worked for me. It has a great mystery—a missing woman—and you follow the old school and amateur sleuth way of solving the case. It’s a delight to follow sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, who all have different personalities and bicker but also love and support each other. There is context for how and why these three women were raised to be more independent than their time allowed. The historical bits are interesting without taking away from the focus of the mystery. I can’t recommend this enough for fans of historical mysteries and I love that it works well for Brontë and classic fans—and equally works well if you don’t really care for either because the mystery and characters are so great. It’s just delightful and I’m excited for more to come! (TW domestic violence/addiction/alludes to past statutory rape) (Jamie Canaves)

According to The Epoch Times,

Given a choice, most of us are more inclined to read contemporary fiction than the classics. If we are lucky, our high school and college teachers force us to tackle such works as “Hamlet,” “Jane Eyre,” and “Great Expectations,” but once we leave behind our desks and quizzes, we prefer John Grisham to Leo Tolstoy and Danielle Steel to Jane Austen.
This is unfortunate. (Jeff Minick)

A contributor to Another Mag explains why she prefers Emily to Charlotte Brontë.

I remember reading Jane Eyre as a teenager, at my high-ranking girl’s school which tried to impart feminist principles whenever it could. There’s a moment in the book when she decides to try and impress Mr Rochester, and to do this, she makes a decision to wear a grey dress that day, not a black one. And as students of the text, we were meant to see this as a radical act! At this point, I lost all respect for Jane, and pledged my allegiance instead to Charlotte Brontë’s more daring sister, Emily (her novel Wuthering Heights, as you might know, is mentioned in almost every one of these columns). A contemporary Jane Eyre would have lots of pale linen in her wardrobe and fragrance-free soap in her bathroom, but Emily’s heroine Cathy is all dramatic silks and flower-scented French moisturisers. I know who I’d rather be, and how I’d prefer to feel. (Lucy Kumara Moore)

San Francisco Examiner is reminded of Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights by a technical characteristic of the film The Lighthouse.

In addition to using a constraining, sinister black-and-white, Eggers employs a narrow aspect ratio, closer to a square than a rectangle, similar to the shape in Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff,” David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” and movies made in the early days of cinema. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

Life Teen tells Christian teenagers that they don't 'need romantic love to be happy'.

Another big self-love moment happens when we can accept that a romantic partner is not necessary to validate you as a human being. Like seriously, who said romance was THE thing? Jane Eyre? Norah Ephron? Shakespeare? Sure, these folks wrote compelling stories about romance that have entertained us all. And yes, they capture our imagination and get us thinking about how, well, romantic romance is. (Stephanie Espinoza)

A Spanish article on The Conversation likens the Brexit tale to a Brontë story.

Las relaciones entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europa durante los últimos meses podrían dar lugar a una novela que encajaría perfectamente en los cánones del género victoriano del amor imposible abocado al fracaso. Una narración al más puro estilo Cumbres Borrascosas o Jane Eyre. Pero lo cierto es que, cuando ya se daba todo por perdido, ante lo que parecía el instante más oscuro, una luz parece vislumbrarse al final del túnel de las negociaciones. (Fernando Lozano Contreras) (Translation)

National Geographic Spain features the Lisa Unger Baskin collection at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University which includes a letter and a sampler by Charlotte Brontë. An article in El Mundo (Spain) likens Ted Hughes to Heathcliff.

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Chapterhouse's Wuthering Heights in Beijing

The Chapterhouse Theater Company is touring China with its Wuthering Heights production. This weekend the company performs in Beijing:

Wuthering Heights
Adapted by Laura Turner
Fri Oct 18-Sun Oct 20, 7.30pm
Nine Theater, Beijing

UK-based touring troupe Chapterhouse Theater Company brings you a fiery and gothic stage rendition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Experience the tempestuous relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, set against the enigmatic Yorkshire moorland. This adaptation by award-winning writer Laura Turner is sure to set pulses racing with its lavish sets and costumes telling a classic tale of passion, revenge and tragedy. 

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Jane Eyre in Brisbane

A new production of Jane Eyre opens today, October 18, in Brisbane:

Jane Eyre
18 Oct to 9 Nov 2019
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Cremorne Theatre
Brisbane, Australia

Co-Adaptors Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij
Director Michael Futcher
Designer Josh McIntosh
Composer Sarah McLeod
Lighting Designer Jason Glenwright
Additional Music and Sound Designer Guy Webster

Featuring Helen Howard, Nelle Lee, Anthony Standish and Sarah McLeod (The Superjesus)

Brontë’s gothic tale of a spirited orphan in search of love, family and a sense of belonging, blazes into QPAC this October.
Witness one of the most iconic pieces of English literature retold in a faithful yet fiercely original new stage adaptation from the nationally-renowned shake & stir theatre co (A Christmas Carol, 1984, Dracula).
Following a childhood spent suffering at the hands of her cruel Aunt, Jane finds employment at Thornfield Hall – the impressive yet mysterious home of Edward Rochester. As Jane and Rochester become inexplicably drawn to each other, the dark secrets locked within the walls of Thornfield start to unravel forcing Jane on a heart-wrenching journey toward truth and freedom.
This stunning new production, featuring original music, written and performed live on stage by multi ARIA Award winner Sarah McLeod, will set a fire blazing in your soul.

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Adapting Villette into a TV series

Vancouver Sun features writer Emma Donoghue her new projects.

Donoghue’s life is busy. She has many projects on the go, including a novel and a film version of her novel The Wonder. And adapting Charlotte Brontë’s last novel Villette into a TV series. She is also raising 15- and 11-year-old kids, so she says it’s not uncommon to see her typing away on her laptop while she sits in the dentist’s waiting room or in a parked car. (Dana Gee)

 We sincerely hope that does happen!

A French article on The Conversation wonders whether detective novels are feminist.

Lorsqu’au XIXe siècle le roman s’imposa comme la forme se prêtant le mieux aux analyses sociales, les auteures s’attaquèrent donc, et ce n’est pas un hasard, à ce que l’Angleterre avait de plus sacré dans le système patriarcal : le foyer domestique, et surtout la propriété de famille. Ce qui intéressait déjà Charlotte Brontë dans Jane Eyre (1847), drame romantique qu’il faut vraiment relire à la lumière du polar, ce n’est pas l’histoire d’amour d’une jeune préceptrice avec le riche propriétaire de Thornfield Hall. C’est le secret qui hante le Château (sens du mot Hall), et en vérité toute demeure anglaise : cette « folie » qui doit rester cachée pour que survive l’institution, ce meurtre fondateur de la première épouse, celle qui doit être dépouillée de sa fortune pour renflouer les caisses des Rochester, puis être déclarée irresponsable, et poussée en définitive au suicide. Un suicide ? Plutôt le crime parfait. Le meurtre sans coupable, sans trace d’intervention extérieure. Le meurtre légal en quelque sorte, véritable hantise de toutes les femmes au XIXe siècle. (Frédéric Regard) (Translation)

New Statesman has an article on the recent Instagram-derived drama in Coleen Rooney's life.

Coleen Rooney, wife of former Manchester United and England striker Wayne, accused Rebekah Vardy, the wife of another Premier League and ex-England footballer, Jamie, of selling stories about her to the Sun. In a statement posted to social media, Rooney explained that over the course of several months this year, she had conducted a complex sting operation via her supposedly private, friends-only Instagram account – posting fake stories about her personal life to find out which member of her inner circle had been disclosing information about her to the tabloids. “For various reasons, I had a suspicion,” Rooney explained. “To try and prove this, I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my stories except ONE account.”
The fabricated stories continued to appear in the Sun. Rooney’s final sentence, which has already been printed on T-shirts (RRP: £17.99; commemorative value: priceless), unveiled the culprit, complete with a playful drum-roll of ellipses. It was a climactic flourish that had all the triumph of Brontë’s “Reader, I married him”, stating simply: “It’s……… Rebekah Vardy’s account.” (Lauren O'Neill)

La Crónica de Guadalajara (Spain) shares some great 2020 plans in the UK.

Además, en 2020 van a celebrarse un montón de aniversarios literarios, ¡así que es el mejor momento para venir! Si quieres conmemora el 150 aniversario del fallecimiento de Charles Dickens, vete a ver los objetos y recuerdos de Dickens que atesora el museo de Victoria & Albert (V&A), visita su antigua casa en Londres o conoce su lugar de nacimiento en el museo Charles Dickens’ Birthplace, en Hampshire. Los admiradores de Wordsworth pueden recordar los 250 años del nacimiento del poeta acercándose al museo de Wordsworth, en el Distrito de los Lagos, mientras que los lectores de las hermanas Brontë pueden celebrar el segundo centenario del nacimiento de Anne haciendo un recorrido por los ventosos páramos de Yorkshire. (Translation)

According to Falköpings Tidning (Sweden) Jane Eyre is the favourite novel of local writer Elin Johansson.

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Harold Bloom. In Memoriam

Harold Bloom (1930-2019) was a notorious and prolific American literary critic Author of more than forty books and editor of hundreds (is no exaggeration) of anthologies of many and diverse authors and novels. In such a vast body of work, the Brontës make also an appearance. He had in great esteem the works of the three Brontës, but particularly Emily:

The three Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily Jane, and Anne—are unique literary artists whose works resemble one another’s far more than they do the works of writers before or since. Charlotte’s compelling novel Jane Eyre and her three lesser yet strong narratives—The Professor , Shirley, Villette—form the most extensive achievement of the sisters, but critics and common readers alike set even higher the one novel of Emily Jane’s, Wuthering  Heights, and a handful of her lyrical poems. Anne’s two novels—Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall  —remain highly readable, although dwarfed by  Jane Eyre and the authentic
ally sublime Wuthering Heights  (Modern Critical Interpretations: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre by Harold Bloom, 1987)

In his vast bibliography we found a few of Brontë-related books:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre (Bloom's Guides), 2007
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre  (Bloom's Notes), 1996Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Modern Critical Interpretations),1996
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (Bloom's Notes), 1996
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (Bloom's Guides), 1996
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (Modern Critical Interpretations),1986
The Brontës (Bloom's BioCritiques), 2002
Bloom's How to Write about the Brontës by Virginia Brackett (Bloom's How to Write about Literature), 2008

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172 years of Jane Eyre

It's a slow news day, with only many sites reminding us of what we already knew: on this day in 1847, Jane Eyre was published. It has been in print ever since during all those 172 years. Charlotte Brontë would be so proud.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind any readers who may have missed it that the Brontë Society is asking for donations towards one of Charlotte's little books, which is to be auctioned in Paris in mid-November. Do please consider donating any amount - large or small - towards it and thus be part of Brontë history forever.

La Razón (Spain) comments on the two women writers, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, who won the Booker Prize and is glad that women no longer need to hide their identity behind pseudonyms, like the Brontës and many others did.

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The Emily Brontë Song Cycle Tour

Today, October 16, begins the UK & Ireland Tour of The Unthanks presenting the album Lines:

The Emily Brontë Song Cycle Tour

The poetry of Emily Brontë, turned into song by The Unthanks, using Emily's original cabinet piano and commissioned by The Brontë Society. Support from The Bookshop Band.

OCTOBER 2019

16 GATESHEAD The Sage Gateshead (18.30 / 21.00)
17 LINCOLN Drill Hall
19 MANCHESTER Home (Manchester Folk Festival)
20 EDINBURGH The Queens Hall
21 BRIGHTON Dome
23 YORK National Centre for Early Music
24 BRADFORD St George’s Hall
25 OXFORD North Wall Arts Centre
26 SAFFRON WALDEN Saffron Hall (on sale 22nd May)
27 HULL Middleton Hall
28 NEWCASTLE UNDER LYME New Vic Theatre
29 LONDON Hackney Round Chapel
30 LONDON Shoreditch Town Hall
31 WORCESTER Huntingdon Hall

NOVEMBER 2019

01 SHEFFIELD Crucible (on sale June)
03 DUBLIN National Concert Hall
04 CORK Opera House

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Getting to know Jane

Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre ballet arrives in Chicago tomorrow and several local newspapers are looking forward to it.

Cathy Marston’s technique is different than most choreography. In her adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s 19th century novel “Jane Eyre,” the choreographer says she creates movement based on quotes taken directly from the novel.
“I really draw inspiration from words and translate them into movement so that every movement you will see on stage has a very specific meaning and intention,” Marston said. “When I’m creating with dancers, the movement comes from inside and uses classical technique. You see that. But all of the movement is about the intention rather than about the technique. The technique is only there to underpin the emotion or the narrative the dancers are trying to express.” [...]
“Playing Jane has been about finding the person that she is,” [lead dancer Amanda Assucena] said. “She’s such a complex character. Her mind expands to so many different thoughts. There’s so much going on in her head, but on the outside, she’s quite a composed person. So I’ve had to play with that a lot and I’m really enjoying the process of getting to know Jane.”
With the Chicago Philharmonic playing a combination of Fanny Mendelsohn and Schubert, Marston says its timely but contemporary feel adds to the emotions she works to capture throughout the story.
It is Marston’s ability to tell this story through movement based on literature that encouraged artistic director Ashley Wheater to invite her to work with the company.
“She’s using the language of ballet, but it’s also hybridized,” Wheater said. “So I think you could say it’s really like theater. And how she has told the story is so beautifully crafted. I was really compelled by the work.”
While acting may be something the company is used to, it also comes with challenges that Marston says are for the better.
“It’s challenging for the dancers but in a good way,” she said. “Who doesn’t want to live on stage so vividly? They’ve really connected with that process. It’s an emotional ride for them. They will be changed at the end of the evening. I hope that will pass over the stage to the audience.” (Angel Idowu on WTTW)

New City Stage interviews Ashley Wheater, the artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet.

What first interested you in bringing “Jane Eyre” to the Joffrey? I think the question is what first interested me in Cathy Marston. I’ve known about Cathy for a long time; she’s worked all over the world. I wrote her and said I’d love to meet her and talk to her. I met her in London, I found her hugely engaging, so smart and incredibly gifted. We both went to the opening of “Jane Eyre” in London. I think the thing that’s remarkable about Cathy is she works in the classical vernacular, she is so incredibly passionate about literature and telling stories. Telling narrative work is not easy; you have to have a structure and a craft to take words off a page and turn them into dance. Once I saw “Jane Eyre” I knew I wanted to bring it to Chicago. It was required reading when I was growing up. I think Americans have a passion for “Jane Eyre” as do the British. (Sharon Hoyer)

History Workshop discusses the representation of women writers in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey in London.

No fewer than 91% of the writers, dramatists and poets remembered in Poets’ Corner are men. There are just six women writers commemorated: the Brontë sisters (3 for 1), Fanny Burney, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen. Many significant women are missing from this list of 19th-century greats, including the writer and social reformer, Harriet Martineau. (Fay Alberti)

According to SheKnows, you should 'Be Using Gender-Neutral Language With Your Kids'.

First. Despite the assertions of grammar sticklers and mansplainers, language is messy, mushy and never completely baked. It’s less of an item with defined boundaries and more of a Brontë-esque foggy morass. Which is what makes it so great! It’s fluid — like gender! (A.M. O’Connor)

Even if the message is correct, discussing gender neutrality on a site called 'She Knows' is ironic to say the least. 

The Telegraph India tries to find out what the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics winners, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, are really like.

Abhijit is a classic Bengali - a renaissance man who makes documentaries, is eloquent and talkative about the differences between the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen, and who sends me the most wonderful playlists of Hindustani music which he knows a great deal about. (Chiki Sarkar)

Book Riot has an article on fan fiction and looks into its origins.

As Lev Grossman writes in fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea comes from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, while Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead tells the stories of two side characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Sherlock Holmes has continued to be popular in fan fiction, with authors from J.M. Barrie to Anthony Horowitz dreaming up adventures for the famous detective. (Rachel Rosenberg)

And what about the young Brontës and their juvenilia?

Bustle recommends '11 Creepy Retellings Of Classic Tales [that] Are Perfect For Spooky Season', except their Brontë-related recommendation comes with a blunder:

'If You Love 'Jane Eyre', Read 'Jane Steele' by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows
In this Gothic adventure, all is not as it seems. A certain gentleman is hiding more than skeletons in his closets, and orphan Jane Eyre, aspiring author Charlotte Brontë, and supernatural investigator Alexander Blackwood are about to be drawn together on the most epic ghost hunt this side of Wuthering Heights. (Kerri Jarema)

Jane Steele was written by Lyndsay Faye, while Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows actually wrote My Plain Jane.

An alternative plan for Halloween on Real Homes:

Sitting in the dark, scoffing the sweets you bought for trick-or-treaters and reading Wuthering Heights is still kindddd of getting in the spirit. It's not called a holiday for nothing! (Niamh Quinn)

The Eyre Guide posts about Charlotte Brontë's story Albion and Marina. We are hoping for a lengthy account of the event, but in the meantime, do check the Twitter hashtag #BronteLister for details about yesterday's conference.

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Jane Eyre Dances in Chicago

Tomorrow, October 16, the Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre ballet opens in Chicago:

The Joffrey Ballet presents
Jane Eyre
Choreography:  Cathy Marston
Music:  Philip Feeney
October 16-27, 2019
The Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, Chicago

Marston's adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's trailblazing novel is a "quietly enthralling classic" (The Guardian) that combines theater and dance to tell the coming-of-age story of Jane Eyre, one of literature's most iconic characters. After a difficult upbringing, Jane becomes the governess for the mysterious Mr. Rochester. With stirring choreography and an enthralling Victorian design, this avant-garde ballet breaks the mold of the traditional ballet heroine.
One of literature's most iconic heroines comes to life.

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Women writers and saints

It's National Women Writers Day in Spain and Diario de Navarra comments on it.

En relación con el amor y la libertad, a Concha Pasamar le vienen a la cabeza “inevitablemente” las hermanas Brontë y, sobre todo, Charlotte, la autora de Jane Eyre. “Es, a la par que una historia de amor expresado en una manera abierta que llegó a escandalizar en su tiempo, una afirmación de la igualdad de patrones, una denuncia del modelo educativo predominante y una indagación sincera en el yo femenino como no se había dado con anterioridad. Es, además, una reflexión explícita sobre el papel y la dignidad de la mujer, también de su igualdad en el plano amoroso y de su derecho a la elección libre de su destino. Toda esta riqueza no se recupera en su plenitud sino en la lectura de Jane Eyre en las palabras de su creadora, un clásico que sigo recomendando”, dice la ilustradora. (Paula Etxeberria Cayuela) (Translation)

AnneBrontë.org has a post on the canonisation yesterday of Saint John Henry Newman and Charlotte's take on him. Jane Eyre's Library (Spain) shows a Sri Lankan edition of Jane Eyre.

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Brontë in Ramsbottom

A new amateur production of Jane Eyre opens tomorrow, October 15, in Ramsbottom, UK:

Summerseat Players present
Brontë
by Polly Teale
Directed by Eleanor Maxwell
The Play runs from Tuesday 15/10/2019 to Saturday 19/10/2019

A compelling literary detective story about the turbulent lives of the Brontë sisters – dramatised by Polly Teale and Shared Experience, the team behind After Mrs Rochester and Jane Eyre.
In 1845, Branwell Brontë returns home in disgrace, plagued by his addictions. As he descends into alcoholism and insanity, bringing chaos to the household, his sisters write…
Polly Teale’s extraordinary play evokes the real and imagined worlds of the Brontës, as their fictional characters come to haunt their creators.

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Avid Readers

The Sunday Times (Zimbabwe) praises Jane Austen's Persuasion:

Besides being a journalist, I am also a literature student. As much as I am attracted to contemporary literature, I am equally an avid reader of old English literature in the tradition of Virginia Wolf, Charles Dickens, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen. (Ranga Mataire)

The Observer reviews a National Portrait Gallery exhibition of the artist Elizabeth Peyton:

There is a Heathcliff-like sepia portrait of Delacroix and a tender charcoal of Napoleon – as if Napoleon and Delacroix were both hot 20-year-olds who played in bands in the 1990s. (Bidisha)

The Butler Eagle publishes the obituary of the local actress Margaret Cahill:

She graduated with a degree in drama from Stanford University, where she starred in “Moor Born” as Anne Brontë during the 1943-44 season. (Samantha Beal)

Stake on Trent Live highlights the singing of Natasha Hemming:

The night started with their support act Natasha Hemming, who I really wanted to mention as this music prodigy was just wondrous to watch. She sang songs including Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, hitting notes only a few can. She is certainly someone to look out for. 

The National Catholic Register vindicates the novels of John Henry Newman:

Newman’s first novel, Loss and Gain, was published in 1848. He was bold in entering the fray with a novel at that time. That same year such classics as Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall were all published. (K.V. Turley)

Female First quotes the actress Rose McGowan:

She explained: "I was reading mostly novels because I didn't want to have interference from other people's style.
"I read a lot of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. I re-read classics so nothing would affect me, but it's given me kind of a strange vocabulary that's a mix between Californian dude=speak and 18th century English literature [sic]." 

El Digital de León (Spain) mentions the Brontës:

En el siglo XIX, gran parte de las mujeres escritoras tenían que publicar con seudónimo de hombre para ser tomadas en serio. Émily (sic) Brontë y sus hermanas fueron muestra manifiesta de ello al escribir Cumbres Borrascosas fue publicada bajo el seudónimo de Ellis Bell. (Alejandra García) (Translation)

Olvido García Valdés in El País (Spain):

Mientras tanto, lo cierto es que, cuando cae una gran novela en mis manos, las horas pasadas leyendo libros desdeñables se ven recompensadas: me da la sensación de recuperar —corregida por el tiempo, ese falso curandero— aquel entusiasmo primordial que sentí cuando leí por primera vez, y en edición completa, Robinson Crusoe o, algunos meses más tarde, Cumbres borrascosas, que requisé de la biblioteca de mis padres y devoré muerto de miedo y sin entender del todo quién era quién, y de qué iba aquel oscuro espanto que tanto me atraía. (Translation)

Libreriamo (Italy) posts about Brontë country:

Protagonista indiscussa dei romanzi delle sorelle Brontë è la brughiera, questo paesaggio così suggestivo, selvaggio e incolto, che tanto ha ispirato le tre sorelle Emily, Charlotte e Anne. La brughiera infatti fa da cornice a Cime Tempestose e a Jane Eyre, ed è sempre la brughiera che sembra influenzare i caratteri dei personaggi e le loro azioni: una gigantesca e desolata metafora dell’animo umano.
Per conoscere meglio le tre sorelle e per visitare questo paesaggio così caratteristico e sublime allo stesso tempo, vi suggeriamo di dirigervi a Haworth, il piccolo paese dove le tre sorelle e il fratello Branwell hanno vissuto per la maggior parte della loro vita. (Translation)

Il Corriere di Torino (Italy) interviews Chiara Tagliaferri, co-author of Morgana:

Era una storia passionale e dolcissima ma anche crudele e tormentata. Lei, per la prima volta, era felice. Quello con Heathcliff (il protagonista di Cime Tempestose) è stato per anni «il mio amore migliore».  (Francesca Angeleri) (Translation)

The Yorkshire Post publishes some pictures of the Haworth's Steampunk Weekend. The Sunday Times publishes a profile of the actress Charlie Murphy and mentions her 'convincing' work as Anne Brontë in To Walk Invisible 2016.

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Interpreting Anne Lister and the Brontës

Tomorrow, October 14 in Halifax:

'I am not made like any other I have seen': Interpreting Anne Lister and the Brontës
Bankfield Museum, Halifax
Monday 14th October 2019, 09:30

The BBC's drama Gentleman Jack is the most recent interpretation of diarist Anne Lister, who recorded her life in great detail from 1806 to 1840. She was a remarkable scholar, traveller, business woman and property owner, and her diaries also reveal she was a lesbian who defied the norms of the time. In 2016 the Brontë biopic To Walk Invisible interpreted the Brontës as never before; in choosing to focus in the three years in which the sisters wrote the books that made them famous, the drama highlighted the bleak domestic situation they endured, and therefore the extraordinary feat they achieved.

This one-day conference hosted by the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Calderdale Museums seeks to examine these remarkable early nineteenth-century West Yorkshire women through a series of papers from invited scholars and museum professionals which will examine a range of topics such as: legacy, non-conformism, hidden histories and censorship, interpretation and adaptation in film, television, literature and radio.

Further information in The Halifax Courier.

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Emily Brontë was actually much more of a free and untrammelled spirit than even Anne Lister

The Yorkshire Post is looking forward to next week's event discussing the possible influence of Anne Lister on Emily Brontë.

It was over in a heartbeat, and it was doubtful that anyone in church even noticed it.
But the exchange of glances across the pews between Emily Brontë and Anne Lister may have been a seminal moment in literature.
On the outskirts of Halifax, two miles from where it happened, authors and historians will gather on Monday to consider just how deeply Gentleman Jack influenced Wuthering Heights.
It was in the autumn of 1838 that the 20-year-old Emily left home in Haworth for a seven-month teaching residency at Elizabeth Patchett’s progressive Law Hill School at Southowram, some 12 miles over the moors and in the shadow of Shibden Hall, Ms Lister’s family home.
During the harsh winter that followed, the sight of the oddly-dressed, aloof and sexually promiscuous Ms Lister awoke in the repressed and homesick Emily a rebellious streak that would characterise her work.
“They would absolutely have been in the same place at the same time, not least in church,” said Claire Harman, the author of five literary biographies, including Charlotte Brontë.
“The school had a pew at church and Anne Lister had a pew, and she would have heard all the gossip about her, not least from Miss Patchett, who was running a girls’ school right next to Shibden. She was known as Gentleman Jack even then.”
The snobbish Ms Lister is unlikely to have noticed the “downtrodden, underpaid, miserable assistant teacher” across the church, but the encounter left a lasting impression on Emily’s work, said Ms Harman, who is one of the speakers at Monday’s event inside Halifax’s Bankfield Museum, where costumes from this year’s TV series about Ms Lister are also on show.
“Emily Brontë was actually much more of a free and untrammelled spirit than even Anne Lister. She was not somebody who bothered about conventions at all,” she said.
“She had a heretical and an amoral mind, which is what makes her a great and very unusual poet.
“I‘ve thought for a long time that Wuthering Heights is a homo-erotic novel, or at least a non-heterosexual one. Heathcliff is not my idea of a romantic hero.
“Its stirring-up comes from Emily’s experience at Law Hill, and Anne Lister’s strangeness and power was a big part of that.”
Nick Holland, another Brontë author, also said Emily would have been impressed by Ms Lister. “I think she felt a kindred spirit – not sexually, but as a unique, intelligent woman who struck out on her own. That’s the sort of person Emily was,” he said.
Angela Clare, collections manager at Calderdale Museums, who has organised Monday’s public event in partnership with the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth, said Ms Lister’s current TV fame, after two centuries hidden from the world, had caused literary historians to now consider her work considered alongside the Brontë sisters.
“Anne Lister never published, but her achievement of 5m words of diaries can’t really be overlooked,” she said.
“There are lots of crossovers with the Brontës in the type of lives they led, in the same area at around the same time, so we wanted to experiment and bring them together for a conference.”
Helena Whitbread, the historian who transcribed Ms Lister’s coded text, will also speak at Monday’s all-day event, for which tickets at £45 are on sale at bronte.org.uk. (David Behrens)

Via The Outline, we have come across this Instagram post by Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame).

View this post on Instagram

One of the greatest books ever written and maybe my favorite. (Jazz by Toni Morrison or The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov?) The immortal and mighty Charlotte Bronte who boldly put this book out in in 1847 on my birthday. She put it out under the pseudonym Currer Bell because no publishing co. Would allow a woman to write this book, this poetic, epic, heart wrenching and scandalous tale. This, my most sacred and favorite material possession, a first edition of Jane Eyre, this magical piece of history.

A post shared by Flea (@flea333) on Jul 15, 2019 at 2:05pm PDT

Book Riot has an article on 'Jane Heir: Writers, Families, and Writer Families', including of course

The Brontë Sisters: Anne, Emily and Charlotte
Arguably the most famous group of sibling writers of the literary canon, these ladies wrote some of the most beloved British classics. With Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Wuthering Heights, the sister Bronte may prove that literary talent is genetic. (Corin Balkovek)

Prensa Libre (Guatemala) features the #LeoAutorasOct movement, which is about only reading women writers during October.

“En octubre, lea solo a escritoras. No importa el género, edad o el siglo. Desde Mary Shelley a Dolores Redondo, desde Virginia Woolf a Mariana Enríquez, desde Anne Brontë a Ana María Matute. Si lo ha escrito a una mujer, atrévete a leerlo” (Astrid Morales) (Translation)

Le Devoir (Québec, Canada) reviews the novel Les Foley by Annie-Claude Thériault.

À travers la voix des narratrices, dont certaines sont adolescentes ou à peine sorties de l’enfance, on se rappelle les jeunes héroïnes en communion avec la nature, posant un regard lucide sur leur injuste condition et sur la cruauté de la société envers elles, que l’on rencontre chez les sœurs Brontë. Le souffle poétique traversant chaque récit évoque également la douce révolte ayant animé Emily Dickinson. (Manon Dumais) (Translation)

Sensacine (Spain) recommends watching Jane Eyre 2011 this weekend.

'Jane Eyre': Brontë, Romance, Fantasmas y Fassbinder
Por qué la recomiendo: Reconozco que soy más de ver las adaptaciones cinematográficos de clásicos literarios que de leerlos y también que terminé viendo Jane Eyre por una entrevista en The Graham Norton Show a Michael Fassbender en la que el actor contaba que el caballo que montaba en la película se excitaba cada vez que se subía encima de él. Pero la cinta, dirigida por Cary Joji Fukunaga -sí, el mismo de la nueva James Bond-, me sorprendió para bien. El romance entre el misterioso Edward Rochester y su heroína protagonista engancha. También el fantasma que ronda por la mansión de Thornfield Hall y el estilo visual con el que Fukunaga cuenta esta historia. Película perfecta si tu plan es un "sofá y manta" en toda regla.
Te gustará sí... te apuntas a todas las adaptaciones de Charlotte Brontë o Jane Austen, a las historias románticas con aire gótico o al trabajo de los actores Michael Fassbender y Mia Wasikowska. (Andrea Zamora) (Translation)

MD Theatre Guide reviews a local stage production of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

Of all the characters, Sara Bennett’s Emily Brent, is at once the most enigmatic and the most obvious. This is a woman who would have thought that the judges at the Salem witch trials were soft on crime. And, she doesn’t believe that her crime—driving a 17-year-old pregnant, unwed girl (this is set in the late 1930s) to suicide is a crime. She was upholding society’s standards and morals, and if people have to die for that, then that’s acceptable. She embodies all the repressed women from Jane Eyre through any of Henry James’s characters, yet you don’t sense any vulnerability or reason for this extreme rigidity. In fact, one thought was that she’d make an excellent serial killer, so unflinching is her personal code. One doesn’t see the fun in watching this character die for the mysterious Mr. or Mrs. Owen—and in fact, she’s simply stung with a hypodermic needle (stand-in for a bumblebee) and goes to sleep, permanently. It’s as if she was removed because, in some ways, she’s the most dangerous of any of the alleged murderers. (Mary Ann Johnson)

Hip Hop Corner (France) features French rapper pone and his album Kate & Me.

S’il ne renie évidemment pas son héritage passé, cet album est avant tout centré autour de Kate. Comprenez, l’auteure-compositrice-interprète britannique Kate Bush, pour qui l’artiste voue une profonde admiration. « Elle est très inspirante et je suis à des années-lumières de son talent. Sa musique représente tout ce que j’aime, la profondeur, la beauté, la singularité, l’émotion et l’innovation« .
Pour illustrer tout ça, Pone lui dédie son album, mais surtout le premier morceau « It’s Me Cathy », en étirant un sample de son titre « Wuthering Heights », sorti en 1978. « J’ai trouvé que la façon dont elle disait « Its me Cathy » dans son morceau avait quelque chose de profondément hip-hop, et que ça irait bien avec Biggie. Aussi, il faut savoir que c’est elle qui a utilisé le premier sampler, donc on est forcément liés », affirme l’artiste. Forte du début à la fin, cette introduction lance le projet en fanfare avec un feu d’artifice sonore. Un véritable spectacle durant lequel le beatmaker clame haut et fort son retour triomphal aux machines. Il faut que Kate Bush entende ça. Où es-tu Cathy ? (Jérémie Leger) (Translation)

Express looks into the financial struggles of music/entertainment retailer HMV.

Mr Hyman continued: “When you want to buy a Charlotte Brontë novel, a Shostakovich piece or Cinema Paradiso they are going to be the same wherever you buy them from.
“If you’re selling something which is unique you’ve got something to defend there.”
HMV has been fighting against online giants such as Amazon which often offer the same products, readily ordered straight to the customer’s front door.
The retail analyst also explained that “the economic model of retailing is under unprecedented challenge”.
He said: “In order to make money you have to add value – adding value to a product that is made by somebody else is really difficult because where can you differentiate yourself? (Kate Nicholson)

The Times has published the obituary of John Chapple, scholar and biographer of Elizabeth Gaskell, who completed the monumental task of compiling the letters of such as prolific letter writer as Mrs Gaskell was.

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In Ilkley, Liverpool and Kyoto

Brontë alerts for today, October 12:

1. In Ilkley:

Ilkley Literature Festival
Saturday 12th October
Time:1:30 pm
Ilkley Playhouse - Wharfeside

Kathryn Sutherland & Ann Dinsdale: Preserving Literary Legacies

Being custodian of a literary legacy of worldwide significance is no easy task in today’s global society. Professor Kathryn Sutherland, of Oxford University and Jane Austen’s House Museum, and Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, discuss the daily delights and frequent challenges of looking after the UK’s cultural heritage for present and future generations.
The voracious international auction market for Brontë and Austen letters, manuscripts and other memorabilia mean important artefacts are in danger of becoming scattered across the globe, in the hands of well-funded institutes or private collectors – far from Haworth and Chawton.
In their conversation, Sutherland and Dinsdale will attempt to answer the question: what is the reality of keeping alive the flames of the nation’s greatest writers in the 21st century?

2.  In Liverpool:

Brontë Beat with Project Adorno
Victoria Gallery & Museum, University of Liverpool
October 12th 2019 07:00pm

The contribution to literature made by the three Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell is the stuff of legend – their work has a unique flavour mingling wild romance, domestic realism, epic poetry and local detail, the personal and the peculiar. This coupled with their extraordinary life story portrays a family blessed with unique talents, yet cursed with misfortune, in which each member although distinct and individual, was bound to the other with an almost mystic affinity. Brontë Beat is a performance collage weaving the facts of their lives with the myths of their fiction. Comprising original songs, film, ambient sounds and spoken word, it explores the multi-faceted world of the Brontës through an electro-pop lens – from their early dabblings in “scribblemania” to the success of their novels and the fascinating history of their all too brief lives. The piece also includes interview extracts from people connected to the literature, landscape and places associated with the Brontë story. Though laced with tragedy there is also considerable joy in the Brontës and the piece aims to celebrate these contrasts rather than reconcile them. And despite being an oft-told story, it seems there is always something new to say…

3. In Kyoto, Japan

The Brontë Society of Japan - 34th Convention
Saturday, October 12, 2019, 9:50 to 17:30
Place Kyoto University Yoshida Minami Campus, General Anthropology Building, 1st floor, 1102 lecture room
Nihonmatsucho Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto

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'Fighting to be heard and fighting to make their own way in the world'

The fact that Nobel Prize for Literature committee chair Anders Olsson said, 'now we have so many female writers who are really great' when he announced that Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature is being commented on several sites such as Stylist.

Women have been writing great books for centuries. From the Brontë sisters – whose novels are still being adapted for the screen – to Margaret Atwood, whose 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale has found new resonances with readers, TV viewers and political activists alike, there is no shortage of brilliant books by women.
You would think then, that the chair of one of the most prestigious prizes for literature in the world, would know that women writing well is not a new phenomenon.
But today, as the Nobel Prizes for Literature for 2018 and 2019 were awarded, committee chair Anders Olsson said he hoped the prize would become much broader in scope “now we have so many female writers who are really great”. (Emily Reynolds)

Xposé (Ireland) interviews writer Louise Doughty.

Name a book you’ve read more than once? “Is it really boring to say Wuthering Heights? That’s probably my favourite classic because that’s a book that changes according to what age you read it. You read it possibly one way as a young woman believing in the existence of Heathcliff, and as a mature person you read it quite differently.” [...]
Who is the literary character you relate to the most? “I quite like the feistiness of Cathy in Wuthering Heights, but a lot of those Brontë heroines as a rule are women who have one foot in a kind of middle class life, but are really struggling financially, are not fashionable or beautiful, and are really fighting to be heard and fighting to make their own way in the world. Those are the women I identify with.”

Den of Geek! suggests '16 Best Fall 2019 Reads', such as

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
[...] This book reminded me of both Jane Eyre and The Haunting of Hill House while also feeling entirely original. (Kayti Burt)

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