From autographs to Charlotte's risqué novel

Today we have a wide collection of different Brontë mentions. From Brontëana to icons, passing by a little bit of everything:

The Mason City Globe Gazette has an article about a collection of autograph items in the Mason City Public Library, the McNader collection. It seems to include even an item by Charlotte Brontë.

A letter by Goethe is just one of approximately 100 literary letters housed in a Mason City Public Library collection established during the 1950s by family of Gen. Hanford MacNider.(...)

Documents signed by Rudyard Kipling, Charles Darwin, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott grace the curved walls of a library hallway — an appropriate location, since this is a kind of literary mindbender, a surreal place that says despite your disbelief, this small library in Iowa does, indeed, house a treasure. (Deb Nicklay)

Regrettably in this slideshow that shows some of these treasures, Charlotte's is not included.

From Brontëana to books:

Sarah Fermi's Emily's Journal (which we reviewed some time ago) gets briefly reviewed now by Keighley News:

Little evidence remains, but Sarah Fermi attempts to fill in the gaps with this captivating Pegasus publication. Could the abrupt change in tone between 1836 and 1837 of her poems be due to the loss of a young lover, to go on and inspire her dark but passionate novel? Written as if by Emily herself and added to by both her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, this book would appeal to many readers as both a well-researched social history and a moving tale of forbidden love. (Hannah Wilson)

Charlotte Brontë's The Professor is commented on this entry in The Egalitarian Bookworm where it is compared to D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Yes, you have read correctly:

The fact that all of this arises from Bronte's repressed personal life, and the knowledge that the book's composition came on the heels of Bronte's unrequited love affair in Belgium is mysterious and far more of a mental turn-on than all the four letter words DH Lawrence so daringly inserts (no pun intended) into Chatterley. While there's no awkward naming of genitalia in Bronte's Professor, all the smouldering passion that breaks the surface only at certain times carried me through its pages in a truly stimulating whirr of anticipation.

The Professor, a risqué book... if all those publishers that rejected the book had known!

Now for some Jane Eyre series and movies.

From the last BBC series a new collection of icons has been made by Tattoedsiren.

Lilacsinmarch has two different posts where she comments on 1934's Jane Eyre version and 1957's Matinee Theatre version (with Patrick MacNee and Joan Elan, more information here)

This might be many things but 'Jane Eye' it is not, it is very amusing though, kind of like a twisted circus of horrors.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, The Professor