The Ephron sisters

Media Newswire posts a press release about the forthcoming exhibition "'Fresh Threads of Connection': Mother Nature and British Women Writers", which will open on March 7 - with free tea and cakes - at the Old Capitol Museum's Hanson Family Humanities Gallery in the University of Iowa. The exhibition runs through May 24.

Included in the exhibit are both familiar names, such as Beatrix Potter, author of beloved children's tales about the mischievous Peter Rabbit, and less familiar ones, such as Margaret Cavendish, whose book "The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World," is both a proto-feminist text and one of the earliest examples of the science-fiction genre. Other authors featured include Mary Shelley ("Frankenstien"), Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice"), Anna Sewell ("Black Beauty"), and Charlotte Brontë ("Jane Eyre").

The Old Capitol Museum website provides us with further information:

“Fresh Threads of Connection,” whose title is taken from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, features ten women writers and their unique relationships with “nature”—and with each other. The exhibit, opened in conjunction with the 2009 British Women Writers Conference, weaves together unexpected connections between the authors themselves: it questions the art (and the nature) of science in the works of Mary Shelley and Margaret Cavendish—it considers visions of human nature in Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen—it celebrates the imaginative animal worlds of Anna Sewell and Beatrix Potter—it examines cross-cultural and cross disciplinary treatment of art and nature in Christiana [sic] Rossetti and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—it explores nature as artistic metaphor in Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. Exploring these unexpected connections between authors while exploring changes in the treatment of nature in literature over time sheds light on the complex yet intimate bond between the changing reality of nature and developing realism of art in 18th and 19th century England, and the parallel bond between mother nature and female artists during this period.

Sounds quite interesting, doesn't it?

The MetroWest Daily News and others liken the Ephron sisters to the Brontë sisters.

Almost as if leading parallel careers with the 19th-century Brontë sisters are the 21st-century Ephron sisters.
While Charlotte Brontë wrote “Jane Eyre,” Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights” and Anne wrote “Agnes Grey.”
In the Ephron family, Nora wrote “Silkwood,” “Heartburn,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” while Delia wrote “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and co-wrote “Michael” and “You’ve Got Mail” with Nora — all while Amy wrote six acclaimed novels. Amy Ephron’s latest novel, “One Sunday Morning,” is a bestseller, and film producer Jerry Bruckheimer recently bought her national bestseller, “A Cup of Tea.”
And then there’s Hallie, who grew up in Beverly Hills, the third by age in the pecking order of the Ephron sisters, daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, who wrote the classic movies “The Desk Set” and “Carousel.” (Charlene Peters)

So, the bit about 'almost leading parallel careers' really boils down to they're sisters and they write.

Gwyneth Paltrow's literary recommendations are still being debated and examined with a magnifying glass. From The New York Times:

Perhaps because the criticism has gotten so shrill. Last month, The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s Web site, joined in on taking Paltrow down for her Marie-Antoinette-like tone-deafness to the times. The Huffington Post likened her literary recommendations (Charlotte Bronte, Dostoyevsky) to a high school reading list. (Bob Morris)

We really don't know about Gwyneth Paltrow's particular choices but choosing classics as favourites is not such a bad thing. High school reading lists are made up of them precisely because they are good books, you know.

The Daily of the University of Washington discusses the use of CliffsNotes:

Some stellar individuals may be able to read Northanger Abbey, Oliver Twist, Heart of Darkness, Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Tennant of Wildfell Hall and a bunch of poetry while folding clothes and designing the layout for the opinion section some 55 hours a week — but I am a student of more nebulous qualities. (Matthew Jackson)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre