Reads tolerably - Writes indifferently

Several British newspapers carry a survey commissioned by the commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA):

Almost six in 10 schoolchildren believe they have to work harder now for A-levels and GCSEs than their parents did, a survey suggests.

A similar number believe that news coverage of their results will be critical, regardless of how well they perform. (...)
And he added that history had shown that school performance is not necessarily the best indicator of future success.
"Churchill was a poor performer at school," Dr [David] Wright [,CIEA chief executive,] said.
"Einstein struggled with his school diploma, and Charlotte Bronte's school report in 1825 said that 'she knew nothing about grammar' and wrote 'indifferently'. So what's new?"

Well, the remark is a bit misleading, as the school report was made when she was 8 years old. For the sake of completeness Charlotte Brontë's complete entry at the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School reads:

Charlotte Brontë 8 1824 August 10th Vaccinated H.
Cough Reads tolerably - Writes indifferently -
Ciphers a little bit and works neatly. Knows nothing
of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments. Left Schools
1825 June 1st Governess Altoghether clever of
her age but knows nothing systematically.

The Washington Post publishes a positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne:

The Daphne of this novel's title is a novelist herself, Daphne du Maurier, the bestselling author of Rebecca (1938). Among her other books is a speculative biography, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), for which she's less well known. Yet du Maurier was haunted by the figure of the Brontë brother, that hard-to-decipher and troubled boy who chronicled the world of Angria, an imaginary kingdom he and his sisters could shape. In minuscule script, he dreamed of adventure and conquest, calling himself the Earl of Northangerland; he may have furnished a template for Emily's Heathcliff or Charlotte's Mr. Rochester. When Branwell died at 31, in 1848, he left behind both thwarted ambition and -- with reference to who wrote what -- some mysteries unsolved. Was he an important talent or an artist subject to delusion; which manuscripts are genuine, which forged and when, for what reason, by whom?
Justine Picardie's Daphne is a complicated tale-within-a-tale about literary detective work, the tangled web we weave when trying to make sense of earlier deception. The novel begins in 1957. Du Maurier is famous, 50 years old, unhappily married to an ex-soldier and anxious to prove her intellectual credentials to those who scorn her as merely successful. Compelled by the world of the Brontës, she makes contact with a reclusive editor of their work, buying (on her part, innocently) purloined memorabilia and seeking his advice. In real life, du Maurier did dedicate The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë to John Alexander Symington, a "now-forgotten Brontë scholar" to whom she wrote letters and from whom she received epistolary suggestions; their actual letters are reproduced here. In this fictional treatment of their encounter, the portrait of Symington is deftly drawn, and Picardie evokes the world of scholarship and how it can edge up to self-destructive obsession.
(...)In this novel's accomplished retelling, Picardie moves with ease from Daphne's memories of Barrie ("Uncle Jim) and Gertrude ("Gertie") Lawrence to her attempt to unravel the question of authorship of the Brontë siblings' poems and even, perhaps, the great prose.
Most of this sleuthing is performed by a contemporary narrator, a young woman living in London (near the du Maurier home and burial ground), as haunted by du Maurier as du Maurier was by Brontë. Orphaned, old-fashioned and working ineffectually on a Ph.D., she travels to Yorkshire and visits the Brontë manse, Haworth, then gets lost in the woods of Menabilly, du Maurier's retreat in Cornwall. Near action's end, she explains her compulsion: "I feel alive when I think of Daphne du Maurier; I feel that her life contains all kinds of clues and messages that might help me make sense of mine."
Less successful as a character is the narrator's husband Paul, a "Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester and Maxim de Winter" out of central casting. He may look the part of a romantic hero, but he's a middle-aged scholar of Henry James who still yearns for his first wife, Rachel. As the narrator observes, "I must say, there's nothing like being lectured on Henry James by one's husband to put you off both of them." Rachel, a seductive poet also fascinated by du Maurier and the Brontës, gets equally embroiled in the hunt for lost texts; there's a kind of Keystone Kop scramble for who will find which notebook first. Unfortunately, Picardie's mirroring stories grow not so much illuminating as repetitive, and we care less than do her characters about who first wrote what.
The narrator spells out the problem: "What right do I have to try to make connections between [du Maurier's] books and her life? It's dangerous territory -- like all those dated, sentimental Brontë biographies, spinning the myth about saintly Charlotte and spiritual Emily and bad Branwell and gentle Anne. Those kinds of books make me feel uncomfortable; it's the literary equivalent of catching butterflies, and then killing them, in order to pin them down and display them in a box."
But the reader need not be a devotée of Branwell Brontë or Daphne du Maurier or even the Gothic genre to take pleasure in this novel; the butterflies are brightly colored and the display well-lit. (Nicholas Delbanco)

The London Free Press announces that the Theatre Nemesis's production of Wuthering Heights presented at the London Ontario Fringe Festival:

Four shows have won coveted spots on the Impresario Performance list at this year's Fringe fest.It means extra attention, and an added performance for each of the winners.

A video of the production can also be seen.

The Kalamazoo Gazette publishes the following alert:

Open-call auditions for the first season at Farmers Alley Theatre will begin at 7 p.m. Aug. 17 and 18 in the Community Room of the City Center Building, 125 S. Kalamazoo Mall. Bring a current photo and a resume. Prepare your choice of a short song (no Jason Robert Brown), short monologue or both. An accompanist will be provided. (...)

April 3-18: ``Jane Eyre,'' music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and book by John Caird.

Ok, now you know...but, why is Jason Robert Brown off limits?

The Times publishes an article about The Twilight Saga's creator. Being an interview with Stephenie Meyer we are surprised that the only Brontë reference found is the following:

The plot is closer to Jane Eyre than Drac-ula, with a heavy dose of Romeo and Juliet. And the series is carried along by an elastic sexual tension that one critic has characterised as “the erotics of abstinence”. (Tony-Allen Mills)

The Charleston Post and Courier reviews an old BrontëBlog acquaintance: Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street:

If Livesey's novel is dense with parallels, it never feels as if the connections are forced. Each of the important characters is scathed by childhood trauma, and each builds a life over the scar. Each narrative also has its own literary mascot. Sean is drawn to Keats, Abigail to Dickens, Dara to Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Cameron to Lewis Carroll. (Catherine Holmes)

A Brontë reference introduced in a recreation of another well-known novel is a new kind of metafiction intertextuality. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviews What Happened to Anna K by Irina Reyn. The K is for Karenina, of course:

As in Tolstoy's novel, Reyn tells two stories, one of Anna Roitman, who's about to marry Alex K., and the other, Lev Gavrilov, who has for years been quietly in love with Anna's cousin, Katia. (...)
A veteran of 14 readings of "Wuthering Heights", Anna is a Romantic with a capital R. She longs more for intensity than for singing birds. When she encounters the hoped-for fiance of Katia, a young writer with his own literary illusions, Anna thinks she has met a soulmate. Even without reading Tolstoy's novel, we know where a romantic's heart wants to go, and Anna goes there. (Sherri Hallgren)

El País Semanal publishes a survey to 100 Spanish-speaking writers choosing the ten books which somehow changed their lives. There are a couple of Brontës: Jane Eyre is chosen by Nuria Amat and Wuthering Heights by Ana María Matute.

Sometimes a Brontë quote can be found in the most unexpected places. Take this article about homeless people taking shelter in a Philadelphia church:

Eric Markle, 37, has trouble sleeping. He sits at a long table poring over a grand jury report on the biggest story in the city - the starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. He is appalled and quotes a line from Jane Eyre: "Such dread as children only can feel." (Jennifer Lin in The Philadelphia Inquirer)

On the blogosphere - several readers of Wuthering Heights: staticmatrix, Only a Novel:

Whoa! Emily Brontë, where did that come from?! As I was perusing this novel, I was just as intrigued by the person who wrote the story as by the novel itself. Who was this Emily Brontë who dared imagine and put into words this bold, brash, intense, in-your-face story? How courageous; how risky; how different; how honest. I like her.

Pixiechick_sw has read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

Wow! That was one intense book! Anne is very ahead of her time. I can see why this book did terribly in the 1840s. It deals with the injustices of a woman's place in society, sex, infidelity, spousal abuse, alcoholism, and other addictions. This book was heavy, painful, redeeming and no matter in what century a person lives--EXACTLY RIGHT!

Categories: Books, Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, Music, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Theatre, Wuthering Heights