The Festival of the Immortals presents Charlotte Brontë

The Festival of the Immortals is a short story written by Helen Simpson that is published today, December 23, in The Guardian.

It's a funny story with some Ffordish touches and the guest appearance of Charlotte Brontë, reading Villette, Emily Brontë talking about the incident with the rabid dog and Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Wolf, George Eliot, Shakespeare, Coleridge...well, you name it.

The Festival of Immortals by Helen Simpson

The Daniel Defoe event had just been cancelled, and as a consequence of this the queue for the tea tent was stretching half way round the meadow. Towards the back, shivering slightly this damp October morning, were two women who looked to be somewhere in the early November of their lives.

"Excuse me, but are you going to the next talk?" one of them asked the other, waving a festival brochure at a late lost wasp.

"Who, me?" replied the woman. "Yes. Yes, I am. It's Charlotte Brontë reading from Villette, I believe." (Read more)

And do not forget the illustration by the great Posy Simmonds.

Categories: Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, References