The photograph seemed to say 'buy me' ~ BrontëBlog

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The photograph seemed to say 'buy me'

Saturday, June 27, 2009 6:33 pm by M. in Agnes Grey, Brontëana, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Patrick Brontë, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights No comments

The Independent gives more details about the anonymous buyer of the photograph of Patrick Brontë recently auctioned and who will donate it to the Parsonage:

A portrait of Patrick Brontë, whose daughters Emily, Charlotte and Anne wrote some of the most celebrated novels in the English literary canon, is to be returned to its rightful place in the family's former home after going missing for more than a century.
Four weeks ago, The Independent reported that the rare picture, which had not been seen since being sold by the Museum of Brontë Relics in 1898, was discovered in a cardboard box at a Midlands antique fair, in its original gilt frame.
On Wednesday, it was sold by an auction house in Surrey for £1,476 – more than double its estimated value. The buyer, who called in her bids by phone and saw off competition from a London antique dealer, is from the south of England, and she had read about the portrait in The Independent.
She has decided to donate it to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, west Yorkshire, after reading that its directors could not afford to bid themselves. The woman, an office worker in her early 60s, wished to remain anonymous, but in an email to this newspaper she explained her motivations for buying the portrait.
"My husband saw the article in The Independent initially and, knowing my interest in the Brontës, drew it to my attention," she wrote. "Having read the article, which I found very interesting, the photograph seemed to say 'buy me', and I just thought it would be nice to own a piece of Brontë memorabilia – if I could afford it.
"I am a Brontë fan, particularly of Charlotte, but I'm not manic about it. I then checked [the auction house] website and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed wrong for the photograph to be in private hands, it should be back at the Parsonage where it belonged, so I decided that if I were successful, I would donate it to the museum.
"I must say that I was pushed to my financial limit to get the photograph, but the surprise and delight of the lady to whom I spoke at the museum was well worth it."
The woman added that she hoped to return the portrait to the museum in a few weeks. Andrew McCarthy, the museum's director, said he was "absolutely delighted" to hear it would soon be hanging in its rightful place in the Parsonage.
"We do get a lot of support from people in a lot of different ways, but usually it's from members of the Brontë Society who we know care about the family's heritage," he said. "When this kind of thing happens it's particularly gratifying, because it's an act of kindness from someone who just read about this picture and realised they could do something to help us, and she's really made a big difference."
Elizabeth Gaskell, in her 1857 biography of Charlotte Brontë, described the Rev Brontë as a "strange" and"half-mad" man who was "not naturally fond of children". In the portrait he is gazing into the distance with haughty austerity. (Chris Green)

The author Sarah Zettel is a bit confused mentioning Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on BSCReview:

In Shaman Drum I found an Anne Bronte novel, a genuine early feminist work that her more famous sister Charlotte had tried to stop from being published.

It is true that Charlotte Brontë stated that she didn't much like Anne's second work, but it's untrue that she tried to stop it from being published. What she actually did is not give it to her own editors, Smith, Elder & Co. for republication after Emily and Anne were dead, in 1850, partly because Thomas Newby still owned the copyright to it. Instead she gave them Agnes Grey to publish in a single volume with Wuthering Heights, neither of whose copyrights - it was decided - belonged to Newby.

We are not very sure that the following advice for getting an A in exams will work, but The Daily Star seems think otherwise:

Give them entertainment. Interpret the assignments they give you in the strangest ways possible. Brighten their lives with analyses of Jane Eyre's prediction of the nuclear arms race; expand their realms of thinking by debating with them the literary manifestations of Shakespeare's desire to exterminate the human race and repopulate the Earth with small rabbits.
Ladies and gentlemen, these kind teachers put up with mindless, poorly worded droning of identical themes for years _ the least you can do is provide them the enjoyment of having a genuine lunatic in one of their classes. (Jessie Matus)

Lijia Zhang's Socialism is Great! is recommend by the New York Times Paperback Row:

This coming-of-age memoir, written in fluent English (Zhang taught herself by reading “Jane Eyre” during political study sessions), traces a life of resistance and personal struggle. (Elsa Dixler)

ReadJunk interviews Bruce Campbell. The actor talks about his character in Burn Notice, Sam Axe:

What is something people don’t know about Sam Axe?
[Sam] reads a lot. He reads fiction, because it takes away from the reality; and that his favorite book is Wuthering Heights. That Sam is a secret romantic. That’s all I can reveal. I’ll have to kill you if I tell you more. (Adam Coozer)

We have a new category: a virtual Brontëite.

Some time ago we reported the appearance of a book (The Little Book of Twitter by Tim Collins) including Twitter summaries of classical novels. Not the only project around about basically the same, the Telegraph reports another upcoming book: Twitterature by Emmett Rensin and Alex Aciman. Wuthering Heights comes to this:

Wild-eyed, bushy-haired fellow on moors causes havoc with local females. If you haven't time to read it, listen to song of same name.

Il Sussidiario (Italy) talks about Stephenie Meyer's New Moon and guess who is referenced:

Un unione tra i due che ha quasi del soprannaturale (non a caso in Eclipse sarà citato Cime tempestose di Emily Brönte, in cui i protagonisti Heathcliff e Catherine sembrano indissolubili, nella vita come dopo la morte). Un “oltre” le loro stesse volontà cui debbono piegarsi. E che non li tradisce mai. Troppo metafisico per quello che in fondo è il racconto del primo vero amore di due ragazzi? (Eva Anelli) (Google translation)