The Truth about Jane Eyre

First of all, we would like to thank alert reader Stephanie for letting us know about a forthcoming book by Beth Pattillo:

Beth Pattillo's THE TRUTH ABOUT JANE EYRE, in which a contemporary would-be governess discovers she may have far more in common with Charlotte Bronte herself than she does with the author's fictional heroine, to Beth Adams at Guideposts, by Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency (world). (Publishers Marketplace)

It looks like fiction and the Brontës are really 'the thing' these days.

In other news, Globespotters, a New York Times blog, has an article on Prague Fringe. Steve Gove, one of the founders of the festival, predicts this year's hits, one of which is:

* The New Victorian Manifesto by The New Victorian Set of France mixes Baroque Harpsichord, sequenced orchestra, synthesizer, drum machine, electric violin and guitar with the words of 19th-century British authors like Emily Bronte and Thomas Hardy. (Dinah Spritzer)

The Bookseller comments on Kate Mosse's forty titles of choice, which she chose for influencing and inspiring her writing at Waterstone's Writers Table campaign.

Mosse's choices span classics (Emily Brontë, Guy de Maupassant, Joseph Conrad), biography (Claire Tomalin, Arthur Koestler, Jung Chang), crime (Ian Rankin, Agatha Christie) and history (Karen Armstrong, Zoé Oldenbourg) to adventure (Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard), modern fiction (Margaret Atwood, Louis de Bernières, Marilyn French, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and poetry(T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson). Each book features handwritten notes from Mosse explaining her choices. (Graeme Neill)

As you can see there are those who can appreciate a good thing when they see it. Others not so much, such as the reviewer of TiVo's digital recorder in WA Today:

I am also hoping to store a bank of gender neutral TV programs for combined viewing (this category excludes MythBusters, TopGear or anything by the Bronte sisters). (Louisa Hearn)

The blogosphere knows better too and is in love with Wuthering Heights today. Oxymores (in French) and Bienve's Welt (in Spanish) review the novel and The Back and Visible Things reviews the 1970 film adaptation. YouTube user TheodoraCLange reads Emily Brontë's No Coward Soul Is Mine. And avpeter - poet Peter Coles - has uploaded an original, informative video on Branwell Brontë, described like this:

Branwell Bronte had three jobs: in Broughton, Luddendenfoot and Thorp Green. He didn't last long in any of them. Too many drugs in too short a time killed him. This Sequence uses three original sonnets by Peter Coles together with music from our own era to try to give some impression of how Branwell may have felt during this brief period of his life.

Categories: Books, Branwell Brontë, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Music, Poetry, Victorian Era, Wuthering Heights