The crisis of the bonnet

The Guardian announces changes in the BBC drama commissions. It seems that the crisis has also reached the bonnet drama:

The BBC is world renowned for its lavish costume dramas, which in recent years have taken in everything from Bleak House and Cranford to Sense and Sensibility and Little Dorrit.
But viewers who have become accustomed to the constant stream of adaptations will soon have to live without the bonnets and breeches, as the corporation is to move away from traditional 19th century costume dramas in favour of a grittier look at the period and a new focus on other historical eras.
This change, which follows the appointment of a new head of drama commissioning at the BBC, will mean that in future there will be less of the types of serials that have characterised the corporation's output over recent years, such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Lark Rise to Candleford, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Daniel Deronda and Pride and Prejudice.
In their place the BBC is planning more period dramas along the lines of this week's The Diary of Anne Frank and the remake of John Buchan's spy novel, The 39 Steps, which aired over Christmas. (Leigh Holmwood)

The Toronto Star publishes an article about next July The Wayfarer's Brontë Trail:

Walking holiday specialist The Wayfarers has introduced two new options to its "Girlfriend Getaways" lineup for 2009.
Designed for the adventurous female traveller and mothers and daughters, the tours have been developed around achievements of famous authors and one famous architect. The two new "walks" include all meals, accommodations, transfers and gratuities.
"The Brontë Trail" (July 26-31) is a six-day, five-night trek set in Britain's Brontë Country where participants will get a sense of the creative inspiration nurtured here as they explore Yorkshire's Haworth Village and several locations from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
Beginning in Haworth and ending in Chatsworth, this walk of 13 to 19 kilometres per day is priced at $3,695 (U.S.) per person, double occupancy. (Greg Coates)

The Yorkshire Post publishes another reminder of an upcoming event: the auction of the Roger Warner collection at Christie's:

Antique dealer Roger Warner's collection demonstrates his ecleticism of taste and lifelong passion for amassing treasures, of which he never tired.
His private customers included Queen Mary, Princess Margaret, Walt Disney, the wife of the novelist Graham Greene, Christopher Fry, Peter Ustinov and the Mitford sisters. He contributed to museum collections, including Temple Newsam, in Leeds, and his treasures included a dolls' house reputedly redecorated by Charlotte Brontë. (Joanne Ginley)

David Baddiel publishes his last column in The Times and wonders how to say goodbye properly:

The only ones I can call to mind quickly, besides the two already mentioned (which you of course will have recognised as the closing lines of The Great Gatsby and Ulysses, respectively) are Emily Brontë wondering “how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth” in Wuthering Heights, Tristram Shandy's mum asking “what is all this story about?” and being told “A COCK AND A BULL ... and one of the best of its kind I ever heard”, and Marlow, at the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, staring, naturally, into “the heart of an immense darkness”.

Also in The Times, a review by Frances Wilson of Edna O'Brien's Byron in Love:

The contradictions that Byron contained are summed up by the adjective Byronic, which O'Brien defines as being related to “excess, diabolical deeds and rebelliousness”. The term, as with most things to do with Byron, is more complicated than O'Brien will allow: Byronic can mean either wild and uncouth, like Heathcliff, or suave and slick, like Dracula.

Mint (India) reviews Socialism is Great! by Lijia Zhang:

At one factory propaganda session, a political instructor catches her reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre hidden under a copy of The People’s Daily. (Anil Penna)

The Scotsman talks about sequels and the most important one in the Brontë universe appears:

SEQUELS to literary classics tend to be most successful when the authors have a free hand to take the story further, as Jean Rhys did with Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea. But literary estates are often unwilling to agree to go too far from the original, as Alice Randall was accused of doing in The Wind Done Gone, her rewriting of Gone with the Wind. (David Robinson)

And orphans are the subject of this article in the Worthington Daily Globe:

We used to read of orphans and the abuse of orphans in our literature classes. Oliver Twist was an orphan. Jane Eyre was an orphan. Huckleberry Finn lived as an orphan. (Ray Crippen)

Cartas famosas de la historia posts a couple of Charlotte Brontë's letters to Monsieur Heger, translated into Spanish and Ex Libris publishes a brief biography of Emily Brontë.

Categories: Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights