Last newsround of 2007

You might have seen on our sidebar that a new biography of Arthur Bell Nicholls is scheduled to appear around April 2008. It is written by a family descendant, Alan H. Adamson, as was announced over a year ago by Christine Alexander. Today, Salamander Hill Design posts what could be the definitive cover for this biography and, we must say, it looks really good to us. We like the accompanying description of Arthur Bell Nicholls too:

Few people seeking to avoid the glare of publicity have had more of it turned on them than Arthur Bell Nicholls. (Picture source)

Oh, absolutely! And very bad publicity at that too.

Speaking of descriptions. The BBC News alphabet of the political year includes Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Mrs Rochester of course.

Rochester (Mrs) - Labour MP Frank Field cast doubt on the then chancellor's suitability for the top job, when he said: "Allowing Gordon Brown into No 10 would be like letting Mrs Rochester out of the attic." For those of a literary bent, Mrs Rochester is the loft-bound madwoman in the Charlotte Bronte novel Jane Eyre who goes on to burn down the house, killing herself and blinding her husband. Ouch, Frank.

The Chicago Tribune has an obituary on philanthropist Rhoda Pritzker who belonged to one of Chicago's wealthiest families and died on December 23 at 93. She seems to have been a Brontëite.

Mrs. Pritzker was also famous among her relatives and friends for taking in stray animals.
In 1983, in an interview with the Tribune, Mrs. Pritzker said her terrier, Emily Bronte, and three cats, Lucky, Heidi and Kitty, gave her a sense of peace."
I come home at night, and it's very nice to see eight happy eyes," she said. "They really don't care what you have in a material sense." (Sara Olkon)

The Brontës would have been delighted to have such a fan, of course.

Jane Eyre 2006 is still very successful on the blogosphere. Two Swedish blogs talk about it, given that the first part was broadcast in Sweden only yesterday: Nina Blogg (who also talks about previous adaptations of the novel) and En Boktoks Tankar. Journeys into Submission also comments the original novel, but beware of adult content on that website.

On another note, Cogito Cogito Ergo Sum looks at the similarities between Jane Eyre and Maria Von Trapp from The Sound of Music. This half of BrontëBlog has indeed pondered about this complex similarity in the past too. We say complex because Maria Von Trapp as depicted in the movie is not totally accurate to the real-life Maria but of course is highly similar. Although the similarities with the entirely fictional Jane are sometimes remarkable, we don't think they are there on purpose, although comparison is all too tempting.

Categories: Biography, Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Weirdo