Holly cried buckets

The Boston Globe adds its two cents to the Twilight-oriented Wuthering Heights covers story:

Can you blame them? Maybe you can, if “Wuthering Heights” is dear to your heart and shameless commercialism turns you off: The British branch of HarperCollins recently published a new edition of the Emily Bronte classic designed to appeal to fans of the “Twilight” saga, the hugely popular series of books about a teenage girl and her 104-year-old vampiric amour.
In the Twilight books, by Stephanie Meyer, the heroine Bella and her vampire pal Edward make clear that “Wuthering Heights” is their favorite book. Scrambling after that bandwagon, HarperCollins UK put together a cover that closely resembles that of the second book in the saga, “New Moon.” There’s the tagline “Love Never Dies” and, even more subtle, an emblem with text that reads, “Bella and Edward’s Favorite Book.” (Yeah, we get it.)
The publishing blog GalleyCat has some harsh words for the “wretched, wretched” British cover, calling it not just a ripoff but a lazy one - “ugly typeface, tiny ugly flower, and an ugly background” - but it has undeniably worked. The new edition has sold 10,000 copies since May, reports the Guardian, helping to nudge “Wuthering Heights” to the top of at least one British bestseller list for classics - hardly its accustomed spot. (Christopher Shea)

Author Maria Hudgins talks with the Austin Writing Examiner:

The 21st century is a great time to be an older writer because, in addition to our rich past full of lessons and adventures, we are, quite simply, alive! Emily Dickenson, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margaret Mitchell, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte and Emile Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Of these great writers of the past, how many of them lived past the normal retirement age of 65? None of them. (Sylvia Dickey Smith)

The Dewsbury Reporter talks about a very special event that will take place in a few weeks. The 200th anniversary of Patrick Brontë's arrival in Dewsbury

A SAVILE Town brewery has produced a limited edition ale to mark the 200th anniversary of Patrick Brontë's arrival in Dewsbury.
The Anglo-Dutch Brewery was asked to make 200 bottles of the specially-created ale by organisers of the Brontë 200 event.
Barrels from the first brew of Old Staff are currently being shipped to pubs as far away as Sheffield, Worksop and Newark. A second brew will be made on Wednesday in preparation for the Brontë 200 celebrations, which begin on Friday, September 25.
Brewery co-owner Paul Kloss said: "Being based on a 200-year-old event, I tried for a traditional style amber bitter. I'd experiment with another brew but for this one I wanted something very traditional."
The special 4.2 per cent Brontë brew will available from the West Riding in Dewsbury and The New Charnwood in Heckmondwike throughout the celebrations.

More Jane Eye references in articles or interviews about Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs:

Imagine instead a contemporary Midwestern Jane Eyre who happens to play bass guitar. (James Schiff in The News & Observer)

Q: The nanny is a stock literary figure. Were you conscious of the pitfalls in creating such a heroine?
A:There are pitfalls? Uh-oh. Now you tell me! I think the nanny/governess is a kind of tried and true narrative device. And, of course, I wanted to allude to “Jane Eyre’’ a little bit while writing this. So I feel I was operating in a kind of tradition, rather than employing a stock character. (Anna Mundow in The Boston Globe)

The Times recalls the origins of the character of Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's:

In the 1950s, Truman Capote would socialise with a fellow New Yorker called Carol Grace (bottom), whom he had known since their teenage years. They would meet early in the morning, and around 7am would head for Tiffany’s jewellery shop, outside which they would enjoy doughnuts and coffee from a cart on Fifth Avenue. One day, Capote mentioned a girl he had known, “almost a hooker”, from one of the Southern states. He would create a character, he said, by blending this girl’s life with Carol’s. That character became Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In his original 1958 novella, Capote has the young Holly “living with some mean, no-count” foster parents; and Carol once recalled she was sent to “bleak” foster homes during the Depression. The young Carol was obsessed with movie magazines, which are blamed in the story for leading Holly astray.
Carol later married the writer William Saroyan, whom Holly says she once met at a party. Carol credited the 1939 film Wuthering Heights as introducing her to the idea of passionate love, and Holly says she has seen the film 10 times and “cried buckets” over it.

The Princess and the Pen is reading Shirley, Echostains has visited Haworth, The Hopper Family Blog talks about Jane Eyre and werewolves (literally) and Donna Rhothery uploads pictures of a recent visit to Oakwell Hall.

Categories: Books, Shirley, Jane Eyre, Patrick Brontë, References, Wuthering Heights