"We are significantly up"

Good news about the number of visitors in the Brontë Parsonage Museum. From The Telegraph & Argus:
In the picture, Bronte Parsonage Museum director Andrew McCarthy on Haworth's main street. (Source)

Tourist hotspots in the district are bucking the recession as they report an increase in visitors.
So far this summer, East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley is one of the best performing National Trust properties in Yorkshire.
And both the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway and the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth are recording improved tourist figures. (...)
A National Trust spokesman said: “All our properties are up on visitors and East Riddlesden Hall is one of our best performing sites in Yorkshire with an increase of 21 per cent on last year.
“People are staying at home and our feedback from visitors shows they are looking to do things near to home and they are making re-visits.”
The increase reflects a similar rise announced by English Heritage, which said in the first quarter of the financial year, its sites have reported a 25 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.
Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said: “We are significantly up in the first half of this year on last year – ten per cent in May and June.
“We have to work a lot harder, especially in the recession, to give good value for money and, as well as visiting the museum, visitors can get involved in art and crafts, enjoy theatrical performances, poetry reading and picnics.” (Clive White)

EDIT: Also in Keighley News.

Lijia Zhang's Socialism is Great! is reviewed in The Charleston City Paper. Once again the Jane Eyre references are highlighted:

16-year-old Zhang(...) [,o]n her own, she takes to studying English, and reading Jane Eyre and other English literary classics on the sly. (Jon Santiago)

Free e-books is the subject of this article on the St Louis Literature Examiner. Talking about Project Gutenberg it says

The top 100 downloaded ebooks include Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, the Kama Sutra, The Art of War, Frankenstein, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Audios available include Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Dracula, books of the Bible, and various famous poems. (Linda Austin)

As a matter of fact, Wuthering Heights reached the 33rd place last month and Jane Eyre was the 26th.

And now BrontëBlog goes tabloid and (not) proudly announces that, according to ..erm.. The Sun Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley (i.e. our most recent Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights 2009) are more than friends:

ACTORS running off with co-stars is nothing new - and now TOM HARDY and CHARLOTTE RILEY have fallen prey to this showbiz trap.
Tom has left girlfriend Rachael Speed - mum to his baby Louis - to be with Charlotte.
The couple met on the set of ITV costume drama Wuthering Heights.
He plays a fiery Heathcliff to her Cathy.
They then starred in Sky One's recent crime drama The Take.
A source said: "The sparks flew from the moment they met but both of them tried hard to keep their feelings under wraps.
"But they were spending so much time together that in the end it was impossible to ignore their feelings."

Now you know.

Reading the Past reviews a favourite of BrontëBlog's, Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow:

In his latest effort, he sweeps the aura of romantic legend away from Charlotte, Emily, and Anne and examines who they were as writers and as people, working separately and together. The Taste of Sorrow is a masterful work, written with admiration, deep understanding, and imaginative skill while remaining faithful to the historical record. It’s totally engrossing as well, the only downside being that it may spoil the enjoyment of other fictional accounts. (Sarah)

A Brontë country mention in an article about British tourism on Payson Roundup, LeadingChurch comments about a sermon by Dr. Timothy J. Keller, Waiting and Living by Faith, which makes extensive quotes from Jane Eyre, The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse reviews I Walked with a Zombie 1943, Wuthering Expectations talks about "Belgium-bashers": Baudelaire and Charlotte Brontë. Flickr user Brimac the 2nd uploads a picture of Top Withens. Finally Distant Memories summarises several Wuthering Heights adaptations.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brussels, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights