Would Aunt Branwell agree?

The Times recently looked at Britain's best 'rectories, vicarages and period parsonages' arguing that 'Along with the Aga, the labrador and the Barbour, the right ecclesiastical residence is the epitome of the English country dream'.

Jane Austen grew up in one in Hampshire, the Brontë sisters spent most of their short lives in a dour Yorkshire version, and David Cameron passed much of his childhood rattling around in one in Berkshire. A former rectory or vicarage, that is. (Helen Davies)

We don't know if poor Aunt Branwell trying to ward off the Yorkshire cold by using pattens inside the parsonage helps keep the idyllic 'dream' alive, though.

We recently heard that Harry Potter has been incorporated into the A-level syllabus. There were a few articles unfavourably comparing J.K. Rowling to the Brontës. Today Kate Bevan looks further into the matter on her Guardian blog.

The news that the first Harry Potter book had made it on to the A-level syllabus has prompted the inevitable sneering about dumbing-down. J K Rowling is, of course, no Charlotte Bronte and her school stories are no Jane Eyre.
But one thing she does have in common with Bronte is that she understands narrative drive and knows how to hook in a reader, especially a young reader. And surely reading should be about enjoyment and pleasure, not about toil and despair, as wading through something like a fat Dickens can be? [...]
But Rowling is more an Enid Blyton than a Charlotte Bronte. Her vocabulary is limited, her plotting is linear, her character development is ponderous and two-dimensional. The boarding-school story trope is a well-worn one: Rowling is neither the first nor the most inventive author to play with it. She's been criticised for her dearth of non-white characters; and there aren't many shades of grey in her stories, which are clunky in their depiction of good and evil.

In the opinion of this half of BrontëBlog the matter is not so atrocious after all. Whaterver gets the children in the way of actually reading books is fine by us. And Rowling may well pave the way for other novels.

(And as for her non-white characters - erm - Snape, anyone?)

Interesting posts on the blogosphere today:

Les roses de décembre was recently in Haworth and took her camera with her. Quite a few videos with French commentaries. Really nice and rainy. The Human Touch was also in the area recently a wrote about it.

John at The Book Mine Set asks his readers to pick between Charlotte Brontë and Emily Dickinson. A kind of a tomato vs a chest of drawers question, though.

Stiletto Storytime reviews 'an often overlooked classic': The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Categories: Charlotte Brontë, Haworth, In the News, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall