Hitting on Charlotte on the bus

We think that Charlotte Brontë would be pleased to read the following comment in The Staffordshire Sentinel:

I AM a regular traveller on buses. Indeed, you may have seen me. I'm that small miserable looking bloke sat at the back with his face shoved in Charlotte Bronte. Not literally, of course. She's been dead 150 years. Although I wouldn't have minded from her picture on the dust jacket. (John Woodhouse)

An alert from The Chatham Journal. Denise Giardina, author of Emily's Ghost, will be reading from her book at McIntyre's Fine Books (Pittsboro, NC):

Denise Giardina: Saturday, August 8th at 11am
Author Denise Giardina joins us to discuss Emily's Ghost: A Novel of The Bronte Sisters, a lustrous, beautifully written re-imagining of the Bronte family and of Emily Bronte's passionate engagement with life. Enigmatic, intelligent, and fiercely independent, Emily Bronte refuses to bow to the conventions of her day: she is distrustful of marriage, prefers freedom above all else, and walks alone at night on the moors above the isolated rural village of Haworth. But Emily's life, along with the rest of the Bronte family, is turned upside down with the arrival of an idealistic clergyman named William Weightman. Weightman champions poor mill workers' rights, mingles with radical labor agitators, and captivates Haworth - and the Brontes especially - with his energy and charm. An improbable friendship between Weightman and Emily develops into a fiery but unconsummated love affair, and when tragedy strikes, the relationship continues, like the love story at the heart of Wuthering Heights. Denise Giardina, whose fiction has been described as "brilliant...heart-wrenching, tough and tender" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), writes a stirring story about faith, passion, longing, and romantic solitude. She is the author of Storming Heaven and Saints and Villains, which won the Boston Book Review Prize. She is an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church and lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

More Denise Giardina's tour dates here.

The London Evening Standard visits Paula Rego's London studio. Her Jane Eyre series is mentioned:

Many are political — the abortion triptych of 1998, made as “propaganda” in advance of the Portuguese referendum on terminations — and some, like the Jane Eyre series, are based on other people's work with which she feels a particularly intense connection. All are intimately personal real stories filtered through Rego's often surreal fictive universe. (Alison Roberts)

The San Diego Union-Tribune reviews The Old Globe's performances of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep:

Despite the difficulties, the two say they're ready for the month-long run of the show, a gothic vampire spoof that satirizes “Rebecca” and “Wuthering Heights,” among a long list of others. (Jessica Fryman)

AustenBlog posts a very original review of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies giving voice to Jane Austen herself who doesn't hesitate to ask Charlotte and Emily Brontë for their opinion on the book:

I have also passed the book around the Pantheon, where it has generated great excitement. My dear friend Mrs. Nicholls[3] begs that you not turn Bertha Rochester into a zombie, tempting as that would be; she feels Edward Rochester has suffered enough. Miss Emily Bronte, however, is in great hopes that you may soon drench the Yorkshire moors with all the gore a zombie Heathcliff can wreak upon them; hers is rather a bloodthirsty nature, I’m afraid. (Cynthia Karman)

[3] Having made several unflattering comments about my work in her lifetime, Mrs. Nicholls was naturally somewhat apprehensive about meeting me here. I quickly reassured her that I admired Jane Eyre very much and that I thought her criticism of my work, in the context in which it was given, was just. She confessed that my work, while not changed in essentials, had improved on better acquaintance. I am happy to report that we are now the best of friends.

Precisely, Half the Fun takes a first step in rewriting Jane Eyre with Jane Eyre and the Jackalope.

Students choose Emily Brontë as their favourite author in The Northern Star (Australia), Letras com Chocolate reviews in Portuguese Jane Eyre, identitytheory explores Heathcliff's conflicting origins, Sourwood Mountain talks about Juliet Barker's Brontë letters compilation The Brontës: A Life in Letters, Espacios en Blanco... posts in Spanish about Wuthering Heights,

Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights