A. A. Gill, un-Brontëite

The Lancaster & Morecambe Citizen carries an article on young actress Prudence Edwards:

Lancaster actress Prudence Edwards, who is the voice of the Young Barbie in Mattel’s new ‘Barbie in A Christmas Carol’ DVD to be released next week, is bringing her unique one-woman show to the city’s Gregson Community Centre.
’Watch Her Now, An Evening with Charlotte Bronte’ gives the audience a glimpse into the genius that was the Yorkshire writer through her personal letters, haunting poems and descriptive passages of Jane Eyre.
Performances are on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 25 and 26, at 8pm, with tickets at £6 available now from the bar in the Gregson.
The one-woman show then go on to play at The Salford Arts Theatre, in Manchester [November 27 & 28]. To find out more, call 07971-136509. (Rachel Ryan)

Don't miss her if you're nearby.

Something else you may not want to miss - if you're in New York in this case - is Goat Island's The Lastmaker, on stage from tomorrow November 6 through November 16 at P.S. 122. And why is that? Read this from Time Out New York:

The first half of the piece is a dance; the second is made up of a series of vignettes, which the performers refer to as songs.
“We looked at people’s last words or last performances,” Hixson says. Included are short scenes chronicling final moments—onstage, in life or in writing—by performers who channel figures like Lenny Bruce, Emily Brontë, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Creeley and Saint Francis. (Gia Kourlas)

More information about the production on this previous post.

A. A. Gill answers a few bookish questions for the Daily Mail, and makes this controversial statement:

[What book] ...LEFT YOU COLD?
Oh, so much. Almost all those early 19th-century novels by female writers.
Jane Eyre is probably in the top ten favourite books of most women, whereas it won't be in the top ten of a single man. Yet I rather like the way that literature divides the genders.

The 'female writers' bit is rather cringe-worthy but we know the statement that follows to be utterly wrong: Jane Eyre isn't in the top ten favourite books of MOST women and it definitely is in some men's.

Thanks to BrontëBlog reader Faye, we now know - as we had guessed - that the Twilight series comparisons to Brontë novels are actually quite void. However, Stephenie Meyer insists on including Jane Eyre among her 12 Twilight inspirations as shown in Entertainment Weekly:

JANE EYRE
''I read it when I was nine,'' says Meyer, ''and I've reread it literally hundreds of times. I do think that there are elements of Edward in Edward Rochester and elements of Bella in Jane. Jane was someone I was close to as a child — we were good friends! I think in some ways she was more real to me than any other fictional heroine.''

The part where she says that, 'there are elements of Edward in Edward Rochester and elements of Bella in Jane' particularly bugs us since it should obviously be the other way around.

A book never unfairly connected to Jane Eyre is The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, recommended today by The York Weekly as a 'reading-induced getaway':

"The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde. Literary detective, Thursday Next, struggles to save both a literary masterpiece and life as we know it. (Kathleen Whalin)

And, what can we say, we apologise in advance in case you are reading this with an empty stomach. From the Examiner:

Last year I made prime ribs with Yorkshire pudding. I've had a fantasy about Yorkshire pudding since I was about 12, just about the time I discovered Dickens and Bronte and Austen. After all these years of putting Yorkshire pudding on a complicated pedestal, I discovered how darn easy it actually is -- not to mention how sinfully bad it is for you. (Mary MacRae Warren)

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre