Hair (not the musical)

The Independent reviews the latest book by Juliet Barker Conquest: The English Kingdom of France. The article begins with a reminder of Juliet Barker's previous Brontë work:

The books that first brought Juliet Barker renown were moving studies of the Brontës' lives and letters, and an immense life of Wordsworth. Her reinvention as a medievalist with her last book, Agincourt, seemed extraordinary, but in fact the interest in heraldry and chivalry predated her appointment as curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. (Suzi Feay)

Not exactly a reinvention but a rediscovery as Juliet Barker is doctorated in Medieval History.

Maureen Dowd talks about the 1948 film The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) in the New York Times:

There are many great works of art about obsession, from Heathcliff’s wailing to Ahab’s whaling, but this is surely the most gorgeously haunting. The destructive obsession portrayed here is not with a lover or outside object of desire. It’s about the tyranny of creativity.

In the same newspaper we find an article about the New York Public Library (which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011) with a list of curious and/or odd things to be found there:

OTHER ODDITIES
● Truman Capote's cigarette case.
● The cane Virginia Woolf left on the riverbank the day she committed suicide. (which BrontëBlog was able to admire when we visited the Berg Collection).
● The original Winnie-the-Pooh.
● Hair from the heads of Charlotte Brontë, Walt Whitman, Mary Shelley and Wild Bill Hickok.
● Elizabeth Barrett Browning's slippers. (Robin Finn)

Another Twilight article with a Brontë connection. At least this one in The Independent quotes Stephenie Meyer saying something a bit different:

Meyer put a clause in the contract that the first film had to be PG-13 and has talked of giving airtime to the good kids, the ones who aren’t drinking and sexually active. “When I was in high school the people I related to were Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, because I wasn’t having that experience.” (Lesley White)

Jane Eyre appears as an example of the use of emerging technologies in education in the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

When the bell rings at the end of Carol Scheese’s Advanced Placement English class in Sparta, she knows that doesn’t mean the spirited discussion of "Jane Eyre" is over. Far from it.
For homework, Scheese often writes a question about the 19th-century novel on her password-protected class webpage. For homework, every student must join the online conversation, answering Scheese’s query and responding to two classmates. (Kristen Alloway)

A Brontëite in The Town Talk (Central Louisiana):

A few of my favorite "sets" of words include Ephesians 6:10-20, "Desiderata," "Jabberwocky," "Jane Eyre," the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and a fondly remembered children's book by Harvey Weiss titled "How to Ooze and Other Ways of Travelling." (Cynthia Jardon)

On the blogosphere today. Posts about Jane Eyre: Ok Libri (in Italian), Perseverance and Quantum Learning. And about Wuthering Heights on Platypus of Truth and from an astrological point of view in Jo Tracey Astrology. Mr Amstrad has uploaded a slideshow on YouTube with pictures of the recent Kate Bush Gathering in Haworth.

Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights