Bela Lugosi as Heathcliff

Let's begin this post talking about two new books. First, the Burlington Free Press has brought to our attention Women's Worlds: The McGraw-Hill Anthology of Women's Writing. And you guessed corrently, the Brontës are definitely in it:

The volume includes well-known authors such as the Bronte sisters and novelist Virginia Woolf, poet Elizabeth Bishop and short-story writer Alice Munro. It contains work by writers many people have never heard of, but probably should have. (Sally Pollak)

According to the table of contents this is the Brontë material to be found therein:

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855; England)
[We wove a web in childhood]
Library of Women’s Literature: Jane Eyre
Emily Brontë (1818–1848; England)
A.G.A: To the Bluebell
Song [O between distress and pleasure]
Love and Friendship
[Shall Earth no more inspire thee]
A.G. to G.S.
To Imagination
[No coward soul is mine]
Anne Brontë (1820–1849; England)
The Narrow Way

As well as bit on Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

Soft Skull Press has published a PopMatters book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman. And PopMatters talks about it today, although what really interests us from the article doesn't have much to do with it.

Bela Lugosi was my favorite—not only my favorite Dracula, but also my favorite actor. As a matter of fact, he was my favorite man. I had a poster of him in Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula on the wall above my bed. I loved his dark eyes, his widow’s peak. His accent gave me goose bumps. Bela was a real gentleman, like Mr. Rochester, or—even better—Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, who’s actually referred to as a vampire, a ghoul, and a devil. In fact, when I saw Bela lying there in his coffin in Dracula, I thought of Heathcliff in rigor mortis with that “horrible sneer” on his face. (Mikita Brottman)

Publishers Weekly reviews Daphne by Justine Picardie, but the short review doesn't seem very perceptive to us:

Former British Vogue editor Picardie (My Mother's Wedding Dress) gives us a fictional life of Rebecca novelist Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) that founders in obsession. In the late 1950s, du Maurier, determined to establish herself as a serious writer, researched and wrote a biography of Branwell Brontë, the often-overlooked real-life brother of sisters Emily and Charlotte. Flash forward to the present, in which a nameless graduate student seeks out lost secrets about the relationship between du Maurier and John Alexander Symington, the Brontë expert and curator to whom du Maurier dedicated her eventual Brontë book. Picardie's novel quickly becomes a tangle of redundancies, as the student, in one plot line, grows increasingly obsessed with du Maurier and loses touch with reality. Meanwhile, in another thread, du Maurier and Symington both flirt with madness in their separate Branwell quests. Du Maurier's fictional characters, especially Rebecca, haunt the story unproductively, as do the Brontës, Brontë protagonists, and Barrie's Peter Pan and the Lost Boys (who were inspired by du Maurier's cousins). Picardie does best with Symington, whose career ended in scandal: she portrays his dissolution coldly, letting observations rip in a way she never quite manages with the fictive Daphne.

If you're curious to discover for yourself, enjoy a good literary mystery and are in London, you might still want to get a copy from Justine Picardie herself. Click here to learn how.

Asiaing writes about Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey. Everyday Gifts discusses about Jane Eyre. And Carnaptious posts about a recent visit to Haworth.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights