Swooning over the Brontës

A couple of news sites bring up the Brontës in connection with the new BBC Merlin series. According to The Times,

Merlin is a magic-realist version of a 14-year-old’s geography field trip. This trainee-costume-drama, kid-lite show is to get them ready for a life of Sundays spent swooning over the Austen-Brontës. (AA Gill)

Not such a bad thing in our humble opinion. Den of Geek, though, goes even further:

Therefore it’s easy to think that this is yet another excuse for the BBC to leverage its copious costume department, and while there is truth in that, we should perhaps rejoice that it’s not another rehash of one of Dickens', Bronte's or Jane Austen's works for the twentieth or more time. It’s a personal fantasy of mine that someone radical will head the organisation at some point and put a veto on all costume dramas that they’ve previously done, because I’ve seen more Taffeta, Crinoline, Bustles, Bonnets and Mr Darcys than you could reasonably fit in an Airbus 380. But I digress. (Mark Pickavance)

We are quite sure that Mr Pickavance will be delighted to hear that there are new Wuthering Heights versions on the way.

Better late than never, as they say. The Keighley News reports - almost a month afterwards - the fact that a new letter by Charlotte Brontë has reached the Brontë Parsonage.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes about What Happened to Anna K., by Irina Reyn.

Instead, she marries Alex, a man in his mid-50s, when she is in her late 30s. As Reyn writes, "It occurred to her that all those years of feeling unique, of thinking she was the only Russian immigrant to moon over Heathcliff from 'Wuthering Heights,' might have been slightly delusional." (Regis Behe)

And as for blogs, Writer's Blog writes about Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.

Categories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëana, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights