Lot 104 and other news

The website of Ewbank Auctioneers includes now information and photographs of Lot 104, which will be auction on June 24 and as you know includes several Brontë-related items, the most important of which is a photograph of Patrick Brontë.

Sale JUN09A Lot 104

Photograph of Patrick Bronte in old age, in an oval gilt frame, 4.75" x 3.75", On the reverse is the following which was presumably the original Museum designation "Rev P Bronte; Various relics including an oval photograph framed and glazed, a small china blue and white plate often used by him and a sword stick. The photograph was owned by Martha Brown and was bought from the Ratcliffes from whom came also the plate. The swordstick is accompanied by a framed certificate from C Stansfield who sold it to Mr Dixon. It was given by Mr Bronte to John Hudson the elder of Haworth who repaired Mr Bronte's boots for many years and was bought by Stansfield John Hudson the Younger his son"

Included in the lot is "Emily Jane Bronte and the authorship of Wuthering Heights" by Alice Law publ by the Old Parsonage Press.

PROVENANCE; Acquired from the Collection of the late Mr Robinson Brown (late of Haworth) Sold by Sotheby Wilkinson and Hodge of Wellington Street, Strand in their auction of The Museum of Bronte Relics on 3rd July 1898 lot 105. The catalogue a copy of which is included in this lot states the following
"A large proportion of these relics was given by members of the Bronte family at various times to William Brown (father of Mr Robinson Brown), Sexton at Haworth Church during 20 years of the Rev P Bronte's incumbency, and to his niece Martha Brown, who for many years lived in the Bronte family. Those relics which were not inherited from these relatives by Mr Robinson Brown, he acquired from Mr A Gledhill, Keithley; Miss Nussey; Mr W Scruton, Bradford and others; a few were purchased by him in the locality."
The collection had for some years been displayed at the Temperance tea rooms in Haworth.
Estimate £ 400-600 (image source)

In other news today, New Zealand got to watch the first part of Wuthering Heights 2009 yesterday and The New Zealand Herald for one publishes a review of it:

Anything that can help the brain override Kate Bush's song, surely one of the most penetrative in pop history, is a blessing.
So the answer to whether we need a new screen version of Wuthering Heights (TV One, last night 8.30pm) is yes please, give us some fresh associations for the Emily Bronte classic.
Britain's ITV might have its financial woes but you can't say it is unduly afraid of taking on the big ones: not only does it roam freely in the heart of BBC territory - the costume drama/literary adaptation - but the doomed gothic romance between the wilful Cathy and the wild Heathcliff has also been voted Britain's greatest love story, according to some pollsters.
Even without adaptation king Andrew Davies on the case, we could expect the populist channel to milk all that mad passion, and add a soap opera star to tempt the mass audience: and so it was in last night's first of two parts.
Well, it sexed things up somewhat with a roll in the heather, but the mad passion was perhaps a little less convincing, not least because the leap-frogging plot seemed to interrupt any chemistry developing between the leads.
The challenge was going to be finding a star to live up to that scintillating character who, in the words of a colleague, inspired years of bad boyfriend choices. Actor Tom Hardy had it all to carry, from his turn in the opening sequence as the benighted master of Wuthering Heights scaring Cathy's daughter with his warped marriage scheme, to the young man seized by love, jealousy and betrayal.
Little wonder that at times the poor chap looked a touch fatigued with all the eyebrow-beetling brooding, and smouldering come-heather - I mean, hither - looks the role required. All free-flying hair and rumpled clothes, Charlotte Riley caught the energy of the hoyden Cathy and the self-doubt as she loses her way. Riley also managed to deliver the classic lines - "I am Heathcliff" - with aplomb.
Stars of the support cast include Andrew Lincoln making his Edgar Linton a convincingly tempting refuge for the confused Cathy, despite his pomposity. And as the villain Hindlay, Burn Gorman did as fine a job as he did as Guppy in last year's Bleak House. Soap star Sarah Lancashire didn't seem to have much to do as Nurse Nelly except to broaden the audience.
ITV also laid on a gothic manor, all stony windswept facade, dark recesses and squeaky floorboards. Its budget for the lowering skies alone must have beenimpressive. There were a few lumps in story-telling, but this earthy drama was "moor-ish" enough to want to return next week. (Frances Grant)

Also yesterday, Lucasta Miller reviewed for The Sunday Times a new installment of the Eminent Lives series: George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife by Brenda Maddox.

Like Charlotte Brontë before her, she soon adopted a male pen name, and to begin with kept her true identity hidden even from her publisher. [...]
How Eliot stage-managed her public reputation so that, at the peak of her career, she was lionised as a guru rather than spurned as sexually imm­oral is one of the great mysteries of the Victorian age. Brontë, who published as a blameless virgin, suffered unfo­unded sexual slurs when her female identity came out, but Eliot managed to evade Victorian prudery despite her unvirginal private life. Was this because, in contrast to the passionate subject­ivity of Brontë, she kept herself at a ­distance, writing novels about clergymen, in the Olympian third person, which preached conservative morality and did not invite readers to identify her heroines’ love lives with her own? How much was it down to Lewes’s skill as the well-connected impresario of her career?

And The Telegraph Herald definitely confirms Louis Ferrante as a Brontëite:

"I loved reading history and good biographies," he said. "I love the 19th century. Dickens, Hugo, Tolstoi, the Brontes. Those are the books still that I look to pick up. Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac.
"That's how I learned to write. I never took a class. I would analyze the plot and the characters. It was less for entertainment. Each book was a study. I would make notes. This is how he does this. This is how Hugo introduces Marius." (Sandye Voight)

The sequel/prequel-to-be-mentioned when discussing sequels/prequels seems to be Wide Sargasso Sea, as shown by a review in The Buffalo News of Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island by John Drake.

Sequels and prequels seeking to illumine another writer’s characters come in many forms. Jean Rhys offered an entirely different view of Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester in “The Wide Sargasso Sea,” her disturbing but brilliant prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s beloved classic. (Jean Westmoore)

In short: Examiner has an article on Jasper Fforde and The Telegraph and Argus announces that this coming weekend Haworth will be hosting a Sixties-themed weekend.

As for blogs, Emy au pays des merveilles (in French) is about to start knitting Charlotte Brontë's shawl.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Brontëites, Haworth, Movies-DVD-TV, Patrick Brontë, Victorian Era, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights