The Practical and the Ideal

The Telegraph has compiled several 'Quotes from the greats' and they have included one by Charlotte where she reviews her reviewers:

Charlotte Brontë attacking male critics on The Spectator and Athenaeum (1849): The Practical their minds can grasp - of the Ideal they know nothing.

The New Yorker has an article answering the following question: 'Why do the archives of so many great writers end up in Texas?'

What is the value of a first edition of “Comus,” containing corrections in Milton’s own hand? Or the manuscript for “The Green Dwarf,” a story that Charlotte Brontë wrote in minuscule lettering, to discourage adult eyes, and then made into a book for her siblings? (D.T. Max)

A very high value indeed! This manuscript and other Brontëana belong to the Harry Ransom collection, which early this year had its 50th anniversary.

If the people proposing at the Brontë Parsonage Museum are looking for Brontësque venues to get married, the Manchester Evening News suggests

Closer to home: Northunberland [sic]
I blame Charlotte Bronte. But ever since I read Jane Eyre my vision of a perfect wedding has involved a broodingly handsome groom (breeches optional), a sweeping staircase, and a gothic mansion. Needless to say I could do without the mad first wife in the attic and other such complications.
However, while my ideas may have changed over the years, one thing has remained constant – the perfect venue. You've just got to go gothic.
With that in mind I went to check out the fabulously majestic Matfen Hall, set in the sweeping countryside near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Built in 1832, the 53-bedroom hall certainly ticks the exciting ancestry box, built by a supporter of Charles II and still in family ownership by Sir Hugh and Lady Blackett. It's enough to whet my appetite for the dramatic anyway, as we arrive up the sweeping gravel drive to see its brooding façade on the horizon. (Helen Tither)

That is unless Alan Bentley wasn't joking a few days ago!

Dsphotographic has a few more pictures from the 1940s weekend at Haworth. They are fantastic! Cazzeggi letterari - in Italian - writes about Wuthering Heights. My Favorite Flicks by Nick Zegarac reviews the new DVD edition of Jane Eyre 1944. And Scribd seems to have typed and copied all of the Cliff's Notes for Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Brontëana, Charlotte Brontë, Haworth, Juvenilia, Wuthering Heights