Haworth-bound

Because merely speaking of travelling to Haworth and its surroundings is always a pleasure, let's begin with a couple of related items.

The Battle Creek Enquirer reports that the 'Kellogg Community College is offering an international travel course that is a literary tour of England'.

The trip will focus on touring the homes, towns and countryside that were inspirational in the works of many English writers. Students will tour the Lake District, Liverpool, Oxford, Hay on Wye, Dorset, London, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, and will visit the homes of authors such as Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, D.H. Lawrence, and Lord Byron. They will also visit sites where some of the authors studied are laid to rest, including Westminster Abbey. While in London, students will take in a Shakespeare play at the famous reconstruction of the Globe Theater.
The cost of the trip is $3,000 and includes air, lodging, in-country transportation, breakfasts and some dinners, entrance fees for group activities, play at the Globe Theater, taxes, tips, and insurance. It does not include tuition, books/materials, transportation to Detroit's Metro airport, all other activities and meals not specified.

Click here for further details. It does sound like a good plan.

Not so scholarly-oriented is a recent report by VisitBritain, commented on World First.

Elliott Frisby of VisitBritain noted that one of Britain's main attractions is its rich history.
He said that many couples particularly like to visit the north of England when they are looking for somewhere to enjoy a romantic break.
"The windswept north of England has always been a hot romantic getaway," he commented.
Mr Frisby went on to say that couples can visit places such as the Yorkshire moors, which were "immortalised by Bronte's Wuthering Heights", or in Whitby, which has "gothic associations, cliff and beachside walks".

Somewhat on the subject of travelling is Helen MacEwan's post on the Brontë Parsonage Blog on the recent event with Patsy Stoneman organised by the Brussels Brontë Group.

On Saturday 18 October, exactly a year after organising its first talk, the Brussels Brontë Group once again brought the Brontës to a Brussels audience. The talk hosted by us last year was on the theme of Charlotte's anguished letters to M. Heger. A journalist in a Brussels "What's On" which announced the event, getting a little carried away himself, invited people to "close their eyes and let themselves be swept along by this torrent of passion". This year we again invited our audience to be swept along by a torrent of passion, but with their eyes open not closed, gazing at a screen on which they could watch Heathcliffs and Cathies from various film versions (the 1939 Olivier one, the 1970 one with Timothy Dalton and the 1991 version with Ralph Fiennes) chasing each other over the moors.
The film clips were shown to illustrate a talk by Patsy Stoneman called "What everyone knows about Wuthering Heights: the novel and its film adaptations". She pointed out that many people are not quite sure whether they've read the novel or not, as it permeates our consciousness. Her comparison of scenes in the films with the corresponding passages in the novel revealed how often we, the readers, supply in our imaginations scenes (such as those between the lovers on the moors) not actually described in the novel.
Patsy Stoneman's talk, which was received enthusiastically, was the first in our new venue in a university in central Brussels, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis. We have for some time been looking for a suitable venue and were delighted when some of the English lecturers at this university who support our events offered us the use of a room which is ideal for our purposes. The staff bent over backwards to make us welcome and help with all the practical aspects of the organisation, and staff and students from the English language department, who had prepared for the talk beforehand, attended the event. In all over 80 people were present.
After the talk we wound up with some music before partaking of the refreshments offered by the university. The music was supplied by a Dutch member of our group, Veronica Metz, who is the lead singer of Anois, a Celtic band which is recording an album of Emily Brontë's poems that she has set to music. With recorded accompaniment, she sang four songs to haunting melodies a little reminiscent of Enya's. Another member, Marina Saegerman, had prepared a display of her calligraphy versions of Emily's poems.
We are looking forward to our next event to be held in the same venue, a Brontë weekend in April when Stevie Davies will be talking to us, also about Emily Brontë. Having hitherto concentrated more on Charlotte because of the influence of Brussels on her we are devoting this year to Emily, who of course also spent time in this city although there is less evidence of it in her work!

On a different note, the ContraCosta Times has an article on 'local teens [who] have a passion for prose'. One of them is Athena Lathos, who has just been named one of the first Teen Poets Laureate of Pleasanton.

"I am a big fan of expressing emotions through poetry, expository and descriptive writing, and (I) like to write about nature and human nature," Lathos said. She also likes to play basketball and swim, but her favorite hobby is reading. She just finished "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Bronte, and "Emma," by Jane Austen. (Susan Groshans)

Library Journal has an editorial on fellow blogger Annoyed Librarian, but apparently,

“The AL is a fictional character, and the writer of the AL is no more the Annoyed Librarian than Charlotte Brontë was Jane Eyre.” (Francine Fialkoff)

And Stuck in a book posts about Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolworth's.

Categories: Books, Brussels, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Talks, Wuthering Heights