From Brontëite to Brontëite

What happens if a Brontëite interviews another? In this case Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, interviews Michèle Roberts, author of Reader, I Married Him in The Guardian:

As a child, Roberts was an insatiable reader with a taste for chivalric romance. Often confined to bed with tonsillitis, she was "entranced" by Malory's stories of the knights of the round table and by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which she regards as one of the founding texts of feminist self-realisation. Like the schoolgirl Jane, who battles to create herself in the face of repressive religion, Roberts eventually began to shake off the mind-forged manacles of Catholicism. (...)

Inspirations
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Guardian also publishes an article where Margaret Atwood discusses Hjalmar Söderberg's 1905 novel Dr. Glass and a reference to Wide Sargasso Sea arises:

Jean Rhys looked at Jane Eyre through the eyes of Mr Rochester's mad wife in the brilliant Wide Sargasso Sea[.]

The Los Angeles Times reviews again Jenny Uglow's Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (check other reviews here):

An exuberant naturalist who rarely strayed far from his native Northumberland, Bewick gave us important and richly illustrated natural histories including "A General History of Quadrupeds" and "A History of British Birds." No one, common folk or artist — Charlotte Brontë and poet John Clare are among Uglow's examples — needed anything other than their trusty Bewick to inform a rustic stroll. (Nick Owchar)

The Age has an article on the recently discovered and auctioned letters found in Albin Schram's laundry room. The collection, as you surely recall, included a letter by Charlotte Brontë and another letter by Patrick Brontë among a good many other letters by very relevant people. What the article doesn't mention is that both letters were carried home to the Brontë Parsonage by the Brontë Society.

An article from The New York Times questions the increasing similarities between public libraries and big chain bookshops.

Further, though the branch is part of a new high school, the atmosphere is not of a kind generally associated with much research. At its center are not books, or computers, or even a reference desk, but rather a cluster of pastel-colored couches and chairs. And while even chain bookstores still put out classics like “Jane Eyre,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Moby Dick” for summer display, at Perry such books have taken a back seat to Paris Hilton’s “Confessions of an Heiress,” a children’s book by the New York Yankee catcher Jorge Posada and Chris Gardner’s “Pursuit of Happyness.” (Sarah N. Lynch and Eugene Mulero)

A sad state of things indeed.

On the blogosphere. Quoth the girl: a Brontëite just finishing Villette and starting Shirley.

And a totally weird, unexpected connection. It's only a nominal connection, but still. Wuthering Heights is a newly-created Russian website thus described

This is a fansite supporting the relationship between Lord Voldemort and Hermione Granger or in other words Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger of the Harry Potter series.

We suppose creating a website helps killing time while anxiously awaiting the release of the last and final installment of the Harry Potter series, doesn't it?

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights