Heathcliff of the potting shed

The Guardian publishes a top ten of the best smokes in literature. Number one is Mr. Rochester's in Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Once upon a time, the smell of cigar smoke was thought to be delicious, arousing. In the proposal scene of Brontë's novel, Jane catches the whiff of Rochester's cigar - "I know it well" - in the garden at Thornfield. It mingles with "sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose". With the heroine giddy on these blended scents, only one outcome is possible.

Zadie Smith writes also in The Guardian about George Eliot. Jane Eyre is mentioned when Middlemarch is discussed:

The older reader is more likely to accept the justness of Virginia Woolf's famous judgement: "One of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Middlemarch is a book about the effects of experience that changes with experience. Jane Eyre is understood by the 14-year-old as effectively as the 40-year-old, possibly better. Surely few 14-year-olds can make real sense of the marriage of Lydgate and Rosamund.

Some days ago we presented an upcoming interesting new book: Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon's Novel Destinations. The authors are interviewed on Book Reporter:

Question: How did you come to write NOVEL DESTINATIONS?
(...) We realized that we were probably not the only ones who seek out these kinds of places during our travels and that there might be the kernel of an idea for a book there, but it was the following year when we took our first literary trip together to Brontë Country that the concept really began to take shape. Shannon flew to England, and we drove from London up to the Yorkshire Moors, most famously immortalized in Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS. There, we visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum where the three Brontë sisters lived for most of their short lives, took a literary-themed walking tour of the town, rambled along the moors, and even stayed at a bed-and-breakfast that was once home to the Brontës’ physician. While we were doing all of this, it struck us that we would love to have a book that would take us to other literary sites like Steinbeck country in California or Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg. (...)
Q: What is your favorite literary destination?
SMS: The Yorkshire Moors in northern England, otherwise known as Brontë Country, was one of the highlights for me. I had wanted to visit there for years since reading WUTHERING HEIGHTS as an English major in college.

Author Jo Hiestand is interviewed in the St. Louis's Post-Dispatch:

Q: How did you become intrigued by the British mystery? What influenced you? What was it about the genre that attracted you?

A: I’ve loved Britain for as long as I can remember — the folk music, the sound of the accents, the history, British classics such as those written by Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Robert Louis Stevenson…. I think the English mystery fascinates me for two reasons: first, of course, it fuses the elements I love. Great atmosphere, landscape, historic great houses, foggy London streets and a sense of adventure in a ‘foreign’ land.

The Book Vault interviews Martin Dubow, author of Francey:

Do you have any favorite books?
(...) The authors who’ve most influenced me are from a bygone era. They are those whose names are mentioned in Francey: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. Whenever I'm feeling uninspired, or lazy, or distracted, I'll open up a copy of, well... Jane Eyre, for instance... and read through some of my favorite passages. And just like that, I've perked up, and am ready, once more, to keep on trucking. I swear to God, if Charlotte Brontë were alive today, I’d seek her out and ask her to marry me.
And to answer the question posed to me here, my favorite books, if I had to narrow down the field, are Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and David Copperfield. I actually get teary-eyed just thinking about them.

And finally, The Independent considers the different candidates to take the lead presenter of BBC's Gardeners' World. The favourite is Matthew Wilson who is described as a Heathcliff of hedgerows or as

[t]alk, dark and handsome. Heathcliff of the potting shed, seen as natural heir as Berryfields' top hoe. 2/1 Favourite. (Jonathan Brown)

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights