Old Haworth

The Telegraph & Argus reminds us of an interesting talk taking place tomorrow, May 1, in Haworth:
Picture: A horse and cart makes its way up Main Street (Source)

Friday 1st May

Old Haworth:

Well known local historian Steve Wood is giving his popular illustrated talk on the fascinating history of Haworth, including some previuosly unseen pictures. West Lane Baptist Chapel, 7.00pm. Tickets £4.00, (including refreshments) available on the door.

Previously unseen photographs of old Haworth are to be revealed as part of a campaign to raise more cash to support the shrine to the Bronte sisters.
Historian Steve Wood’s talk is the first event by the fledgling Friends of the Bronte Parsonage Museum group.
The audience who turn up at West Lane Baptist Chapel in Haworth tomorrow at 7.30pm will be taken on an illustrated tour of the village.
Mr Wood is the author of ‘Haworth: A strange uncivilised little place’ which was published by Tempus in 2005.
He is working on a ‘then and now’ book of pictures of the village to be published later this year.
A spokesman for the group said: “The Friends of Bronte Parsonage Museum are a small group of Parsonage staff who are trying to raise funds for the museum.”

Another event in the Brontë Parsonage Museum gets reported here:

Following the success of their play adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre at the School’s Arts Centre at the end of last term and an exciting USA tour which followed, Year 11 and 12 students from Ellesmere College recently travelled to West Yorkshire to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth for a final day of performances.
At the invitation of the Bronte Society, scenes from the play were staged in the Parsonage front garden on a surprisingly warm and sunny Easter Monday to large and appreciative audiences throughout the day. The play’s director, Margaret Hutchings, who also teaches English and Media Studies, commented, ‘It was an exciting experience for the pupils to bring their production of this much-loved book back to the author’s own home and share it with visitors from as far away as Japan and Canada . The whole experience of touring a play from Ellesmere to Boston and back again to Yorkshire has really taken the cast’s drama skills and confidence to a new level as well as broadening their cultural horizons.’
Pictured are The Ellesmere College cast – Jane played by Charlotte Boffey & Edward Rochester played by Ben Lingard-Lane.

The news agency France-Presse has released a news item related to Tamasha's Wuthering Heights Bollywood adaptation which is featured today in several newspapers in Asia and Australia. For instance, The Age:

The classic British novel Wuthering Heights is moved from the windswept moors of Yorkshire to the searing heat of India in a Bollywood-style production hitting the London stage this week.
British TV actor Deepak Verma has given Emily Bronte's tale a drastic makeover, tapping into the fast-rising profile of Bollywood.
In the production at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in west London, the novel's main character, the brooding Heathcliff, has been renamed Krishnan and his search for love is played out against a dazzling swirl of colour.
The director of the play, Kristine Landon-Smith, who is half-Indian and half-Australian, said the biggest hurdle she faced was taking the original story of love and heartbreak in the 18th century and setting it to music.

Incidentally, Stuff I See in London reviews the Lyric Hammersmith performances of the play and it's not really very thrilled:

I also found it a little funny that they just called it Wuthering Heights. I mean, couldn't they have given it a different name and said it was based on Wuthering Heights? At least have some element of creativity.

Business Standard (India) reviews Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth:

In an interesting aside, Wilson compares the relationship of William and Dorothy to that between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. She even suggests that Brontë may have based her iconic characters on the brother-sister duo. Certainly, Brontë’s story owes fantastically to intense sibling love, as Wilson explains:
“Catherine and Heathcliff, raised as brother and sister in the same family, evolve from childhood inseparability into a hybrid of such inward-looking self-consumption that the disappearance of one means the nonexistence of the other...The two of them shift between dread of separation and fear of engulfment.”
Further, she explains how the romantic ideal of Catherine and Heathcliff—and indeed, of William and Dorothy—is sexless:
“Like Dorothy and William, they [Catherine and Heathcliff] have sexual desires but not for each other. Sexual desire feeds on distance and separation, and what Catherine and Dorothy describe is proximity and sameness.” (Vikram Johri)

Briefer mentions: Noisy motorists in The Bexley Times and Mr. Wright's characteristics include

He once read all the Bronte sisters novels in an afternoon

according to Steph's Musings on Associated Content.

On the blogosphere we find that Ingrids boktankar posts about Agnes Grey (in Swedish), and Ocean Dreams and Teen Book Monsters talk about Jane Eyre.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Byron and Bollywood

Two new recent Brontë-related publications:

The Gothic Byron
Peter Cochran
ISBN: 9781443802444
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

"Byron and Gothic" examines in detail the Gothic element in Byron's work, arguing that it has traditionally been undervalued. It looks closely at his reading in the novels of Ann Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, and Charlotte Dacre, and then discusses the Gothic elements in his Turkish Tales, plays, and satirical poetry, ending with two essays on Don Juan. Further essays explore the indebtedness of several European and English writers, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë, to the Gothic element in Byron's poetry.

Tamasha Theatre's Bollywood Wuthering Heights adaptation:

Wuthering Heights
Modern Plays
by Felix Cross, Deepak Verma
A&C Black
Published 2009
ISBN 9781408120781
Format Paperback 96 pages.

The scorched desert of Rajasthan is the setting for this musical adaptation of Emily Bronte’s timeless tale of passion, jealousy and revenge.
Shakuntala is the fiery and headstrong daughter of spice merchant Singh. Krishan is the wily
street urchin from Bombay that Singh brings home after a trip to market. Thrown together as unlikely siblings, a tumultuous romance soon develops. But can their love withstand Indian society’s taboos and hierarchies, not to mention Shakuntala's yearning for a life of luxury that only neighbouring landowner Vijay can provide?
Wuthering Heights, one of the world’s great love stories, is given a vibrant new life in this new adaptation produced by Tamasha and inspired by classic Indian cinema.

Categories: Books, Scholar, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Jane Eyre in Vernal

A student production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical opens today, April 30 in Vernal, Utah:
Picture: Larissa Pearson, Greg Richards, Tahlya Matthews, and Jordan Simmons rehearse the final scenes of Jane Eyre (Source).

Vernal Junior High School will present the musical Jane Eyre April 30 and May 1, 2, and 4. Tickets are four dollars each and can be purchased at the door or from one of the cast members. The cast consists of mainly eighth and ninth graders, but this year’s cast will also include several sixth and seventh-grade participants. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
Jane Eyre is directed by Norman Bernard, the drama teacher at Vernal Junior High, and Kerilynne Pearson, the music director. This year, Vernal Junior High will have a ‘mini-orchestra,’ that will include a violin, flute, clarinet, bass guitar, trumpet, keyboard, and two percussionists.
“It sounds beautiful,” said Pearson. “And the cast sounds great, too. It’s just a really good piece overall.”
Some of the cast includes: Larissa Pearson as Jane Eyre, Jordan Simmons as Edward Rochester, Hannah Whiteside as Blanche Ingram, Wendy Bird as Bertha Rochester, Tahlya Matthews as Mrs. Fairfax, and Josh Daniel as St. John.
The stage musical is based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic work, Jane Eyre, a novel first published in 1847. Like the book, the musical has central themes such as social class, gender equality, and also focuses on love, redemption, and forgiveness.
“It’s just a really good story,” said Pearson. “There’s something for everyone.” (Ali Shipton in Vernal Express)

Categories: Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre

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A great romance novel?

We read in the Reading Evening News about a recent student production of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre at the St Joseph's Convent School in Reading, UK: (Picture source)

Junior dramatists from Years Eight to 10 at St Joseph’s Convent School in Reading performed three sell-out performances of Polly Teale’s atmospheric adaptation of Jane Eyre.
They used physical theatre techniques – storytelling through primarily physical means – and exploring Teale’s fascination with the dual personality of Jane Eyre.
The part of Jane Eyre was shared between three pupils – Adele Trevorrow, Phoebe Leigh and Matilda Kimble Wilde – all of whom rose superbly to the challenge of portraying both the passionate and the very suppressed sides of the same character.
In the lead-up to the performances, the girls had enjoyed an exciting rehearsal period, which involved attending physical theatre workshops and taking the opportunity to direct some of the most exciting moments of the play themselves
Students from Year 11 were also involved in the production of the play, including lighting, make-up and stage management.
Laura Sutherland, drama teacher at St Joseph’s, who directed the play, said afterwards: “The play was an adventurous choice for girls as young as Year Eight but the cast performed brilliantly and all the girls should be congratulated for their excellent team work and effort.”

More information can be found on the easter 2009 newsletter of the school.

The Flyer (the student newspaper of the Lewis University) opens one of the pre-summer classics: the book recommendations for the summer vacation.

For those suffering from "Twilight" withdrawals, I have a book to get you through until the next big pop-culture hit.
"Wuthering Heights," a classic novel by Emily Bronte involves a revenge plot played out by some of the most famous love-story characters of all time: Heathcliff and Cathy.
Complete with two men fighting over one woman, and the unbelievable lengths they go to in order to have Cathy's love; the parallels between "Wuthering Heights" and "Twilight" are more than just romantic in nature. (Mariann Daniel)

And our final education-related topic, we read in The Guardian how the number of students taking GCSE in English Literature is falling:

More than a quarter of state school pupils do not take English literature GCSE, and children in the poorest parts of the country are least likely to be tested on their understanding of the classics at 16, new figures reveal.
The proportion opting to do an English literature GCSE is declining, with 72% of state school pupils doing the literature GCSE last year compared with 77% five years ago, according to figures released in parliament to the Conservatives.
Under the national curriculum, all pupils have to study at least one Shakespeare play and a selection of pre-20th century writers, including Jane Austen, William Blake and Charlotte Brontë, within the compulsory English GCSE. But the Tories say that if pupils don't have to do the literature GCSE, they will read only the bare minimum and never develop a love of literature. (Polly Curtis)

The arrival of Tamasha Theatre's Wuthering Heights to London is announced in The Londonist:

As does a new Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights from the imagination of Deepak Verma (that's EastEnders' Sanjay to me and you) at the Lyric Hammersmith. (ZoZo)

and Digital Spy:

Emily Bronte's classic novel Wuthering Heights has been given a Bollywood makeover in a new stage adaptation.
The play, which is written by former EastEnders actor Deepak Verma, transports the 19th century story of Heathcliff and Catherine to 1770s Rajasthan.
Wuthering Heights director Kristine Landon-Smith told The Times: “It's such a perfect marriage of story and genre, it seems almost obvious. When Brontë meets Bollywood, it really works.”
The adaptation, which begins its run at the Lyric Hammersmith in London next Wednesday, features an authentic Indian score that will be lip-synched on stage.
Gurinder Chadha achieved box office success with 2004 hit Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood spin on Jane Austen's masterpiece. (Sanjay Odedra)

The Gwent Gazette announces yet another Brontë-related theatre event. The upcoming production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre: The Musical in Ebbw Vale, Wales:

And Ebbw Vale Operatic and Dramatic Society have taken up the challenge of giving the story its first Welsh performance. At the Beaufort Theatre between Monday, May 11, and Saturday, May 16, audience goers will get to follow the story of young orphan Jane as she struggles to find her way in the world and to form a life with the dour Mr Rochester.
With an emphasis on costume rather than elaborate sets, directors Craig James and Rebecca Bull – who are also taking the lead roles – are hoping the dramatic interpretation will both pack the seats and wow the crowds.
Tickets for this forthcoming premiere can be obtained by ringing Pat on 01495 350179 or Joy on 01495 303794.

The Times traces the origins of Wolverine, the comic character, which is now the main character on the upcoming film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The author of the article finds echoes of lots of nineteenth-century novels:

Wolverine Origin, which serves as the film's inspiration, is set in late 19th century and tells the story of a servant girl who befriends a frail, pampered boy from a rich family. The boy eventually turns into a rough, beer-swilling clawed killer after a series of tragedies that could come from any great novel of the period, with the plot bearing similarities to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Great Expectations among others. (Owen Vaughan)

EDIT: Fluctuat.net also talks about the film and the comic:

Le début du film est symptomatique de cette option : le réalisateur démarre en copiant quasi plan à plan le Wolverine Origins de Jenkins et Kubert et ouvre sur une scène iniatique qui nous donne un aperçu de ce qu'aurait pu être un film de Wolverine victorien et inspiré des Hauts de Hurlevent (ce qui est le cas de ce chef d'oeuvre bande-dessinée). (Myosotis) (Google translation)

Other Brontë mentions and Brontëites around: students in Wrightsville Beach Magazine, movie location "set jetters" in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Apple Mac OS X Security advices on Palluxo!, S/F author Tony Ballantyne interviewed by Walker of Words:

Do you still find time to read, and if so anything in particular?
Oh yes, I love to read. I’m just finishing Villette by Charlotte Bronte. I rather like Victorian Fiction, I find it very familiar and different at the same time, it can give a sense of a changing world, rather like SF.

On Suite101 Samantha Markham publishes a synopsis and analysis of Jane Eyre and on Helium, Sarah Fraser publishes a review of the same novel:

As a bildungsroman, Jane Eyre follows the journey of its heroine's development from youth to intellectual maturity. As the novel progresses the theme of religion is one that takes a strong hold on Jane herself. In order to analyse the question, one must differentiate between Paganism and Christianity. (Read more)

The Albany Public Library blog Read With Me raises several questions about Wuthering Heights including one of BrontëBlog's favourite ones:

How much or how little do you agree with the assessment of Wuthering Heights as a great romance novel?

Slanted probably has a good reply to the question as she briefly comments Wuthering Heights 2009. Lara.blogja. =D posts about Wuthering Heights in Hungarian, Gypsy Tales and Shalee's Diner review Agnes Grey, Rambling On... posts several nice pictures of the Haworth moors, including Top Withins and the Brontë Bridge.

Finally, the Brussels Brontë Group publishes an account of their recent Brontë weekend events. Check it out:

On 24-26 April the Brussels Brontë Group held a Brontë weekend of events for the third consecutive year. The programme this year was ambitious, with musical settings of Emily Brontë's poems, talks by the writer Stevie Davies and by a Brussels-based academic, Philip Riley, and the guided walk which has become a fixture at these weekends. (Read more) (Helen MacEwan)

Categories: Agnes Grey, Brontëites, Brussels, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Northern Ballet Wuthering Heights on UK Tour

The Northern Ballet Theatre celebrates its 40th anniversary with a revival of its Wuthering Heights production first premiered in 2002:

The Northern Ballet
Wuthering Heights
* Choreography by David Nixon
* Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg

Passionate and obsessive, Cathy and Heathcliff's love is as unruly and dangerous as the Yorkshire moors that surround them:

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
Cathy

As children they are inseparable, running wild and free on the moors, but over time their childish affection deepens into an overwhelming love – a devastating force that even death cannot destroy.

Northern Ballet Theatre is one of the UK's leading ballet companies whose dancers' ability to capture the spirit of their characters draws audiences into the story in a way that makes our productions more than just dance.
With an original score by celebrated composer Claude-Michel Schönberg, known for his West End and Broadway hits Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, see this turbulent love story brought to life in Northern Ballet Theatre's adaptation of Emily Brontë's romantic masterpiece.

Read the full scenario for Wuthering Heights
Read previous reviews.

Running Time: 2 hours aprx

Creative Team

* Orchestrated by William David Brohn
* Additional Orchestration by John Longstaff
* Theatre Associate and Dramaturge Patricia Doyle
* Set design by Ali Allen
* Costume Design by David Nixon
* Lighting Design by David Grill

TOUR:

Hull, New Theatre

29 April - 2 May, 2009

* Evenings: 7:30
* Matinees (30 Apr & 2 May): 2:30

Milton Keynes Theatre

5 - 9 May, 2009

* Evenings: 7:30
* Matinees (7 & 9 May): 2:30

Belfast, Grand Opera House

2 - 6 June, 2009

* Evenings: 7:30
* Matinee (4 Jun): 2:00
* Matinee (6 Jun): 2:30

Llandudno, Venue Cymru

11 - 13 June, 2009

* Evenings: 7:30
* Matinee (13 Jun): 2:30

Norwich, Theatre Royal

29 September – 3 October, 2009

Woking, New Victoria Theatre

6 – 10 October, 2009

Bradford, Alhambra Theatre

20 – 24 October, 2009

The Northern Ballet Theatre has also its own blog with further information about these performances.

Picture credits: Hanson. Source

Categories: Dance, Wuthering Heights

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Writers' Rooms at the Parsonage

A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Picture: Beryl Bainbridge’s room by Eamonn McCabe

WRITERS’ ROOMS: AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY EAMONN MCCABE

A special exhibition of photographs by Eamonn McCabe, from his series Writers’ Rooms published every Saturday in The Guardian, goes on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum on Friday 1 May until Monday 6 July 2009.

Writers’ Rooms features photographs of the rooms where authors have created their famous works, and the series documents the writing spaces of novelists, biographers and poets in The Guardian each week. This exhibition features a selection of original prints from the series, including Alan Sillitoe, Sue Townsend and Jacqueline Wilson’s rooms.

The exhibition takes place as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s contemporary arts programme.

“One of the most exciting aspects of a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum is to see the very room in which the Brontës wrote their famous novels. With this new exhibition we can also offer a fascinating glimpse into the writing rooms of some of the most important contemporary writers working today”.

Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer

Eamonn McCabe made his name as a sports photographer for The Observer in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1988 he became Picture Editor of The Guardian and has been awarded Picture Editor of the Year six times. In 2001 he returned to full-time photography, specializing in portraiture. A selection of photographs from his series Artists and their Studios was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2008.

The exhibition is free with normal admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

EDIT: Also in The Telegraph & Argus and again.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum

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The Brontë writing on the wall

The ranks of Brontëites are ever-growing, no doubt about it. To begin with, the Denver Examiner introduces 'emerging author', Amy Greene.

Amy says reading has always inspired her to write, and cites the Bronte Sisters, Virginia Woolf, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and, surprisingly, Stephen King (“His influence is probably still visible in my writing, even though I don't write horror.”) as having most influenced the development of her particular style. (Zack Kopp)

And last but not least, the bulk of the Brontëites: those anonymous readers that we sometimes find in real life, on blogs, etc. The Los Angeles Times blog Jacket Copy writes about the "What Are You Reading" graffiti wall at the recent Festival of Books, were people were welcome to add their particular choice. The article highlights just a few of the many, many writings (see the photos here).

And "Pastoralia," George Saunders; "Villette," Charlotte Bronte; "Maps and Legends," Michael Chabon; "Consider the Lobster," "The Lovely Bones," "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Blood Meridian," The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," "Gone With the Wind," "Less Than Zero," Ann Coulter and "The Audacity of Hope."

Hard to know for sure, but we have a feeling that Villette wasn't the only Brontë read on the wall. And what a great inititiave at any rate!

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick is once more connected in some way or other to the Brontës, this time on NPR.

Murder, madness, unbridled passion — It's the stuff of romance novels. But Robert Goolrick's new book A Reliable Wife is more complex than that. Sure, Goolrick makes good use of some familiar literary types: the lonely, wealthy man with dark secrets in his past, the expected arrival of a prim, proper woman who will change his life and share his mansion in the middle of nowhere.
But the mail-order bride who steps off the train as the book begins is no Jane Eyre. She is a beauty and a liar with her own dark secrets and her own sinister plans. In his first novel, Goolrick, who until now has been best known for his memoir The End of the World As We Know It has spun a tale that will keep many a reader turning the pages late at night to find out what happens next.

An improbable book to be mentioned on BrontëBlog is Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Weston. However, The Globe and Mail makes a connection for us:

[Describing the author, Gabriel Weston] She has the delicate complexion and busy blue eyes of a moor-side Brontë heroine and the slender, sinewy build of the caffeinated urban careerist. (Olivia Stren)

PopMatters quotes a charming fragment from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

There’s a scene in Truman Capote’s classic, Breakfast at Tiffany’s that sums up how I feel about the movie adaptation of the book. The narrator of the story, “Fred”, is having an argument with lead character, Holly Golightly about literature because he thinks she can’t appreciate it. He’s asks her to give him an example of a literary work that means something to her. When her answer turns out to be Wuthering Heights, he is outraged.

“But that’s unreasonable,” he says. “You’re talking about a work of genius.”

“It was, wasn’t it? My wild sweet Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times,” she says.

“Oh,” Fred says. “The movie.”

(Jennifer Makowsky)

The National describes French actress Isabelle Huppert as follows:

Fittingly, when the director André Téchiné made The Brontë Sisters in 1979, Huppert played Anne, the least celebrated of the novelist siblings, but in hindsight perhaps the most talented. Whereas her sisters specialised in romanticism, Anne Brontë wrote with a sharp and ironic vigour that sidestepped fantasy. The same could be said of Huppert, who has always offered a vision of the real, while most French actresses are the epitome of glamour. (Kaleem Aftab)

It might be true that Anne's style is more down-to-earth than her sisters', but that doesn't automatically turn them into empty-headed romantics, which is what that sounds like.

The blogosphere is all about Jane Eyre today: Soon Remembered Tales, The Gentle Reader and Bibliofreak all discuss the novel. KM Stitchery has made a lovely stencilled shirt of Charlotte Brontë, for sale on Etsy. She promises more Brontë things to come this week too. Snowflakes in Rain writes about Agnes Grey in Swedish. And Echostains Blog posts a few pictures of Haworth. Finally, NCArts has uploaded to YouTube a video from NC Poetry Out Loud 2009 where 'Alyssa Matthewson, of Chatham Central High School, recites "Shall earth no more inspire thee" by Emily Jane Bronte'

EDIT: An alert for today, April 28, from Lima (Perú):

La Literatura en el Cine: Cumbres Borrascosas

Fecha: el 28/04/2009
Horas: 7 pm.
Lugar: ICPNA Lima Centro ( Jr. Cusco 446 )

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Poetry, References, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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The Writing Bug's Dark Mirror

A couple of talks and an exhibition are our alerts for today:

1. A talk in Orem City, Utah:

'Literature Mind Marathon: The Brontë Family’s Writing Bug'
Orem Public Library

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 At 07:00 PM
Contact Info: 801-229-7175

The Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne are the most famous author sisters to have written in the English language, but most readers don’t realize their father and brother were also published authors. Dr. Leslee Thorne-Murphy, Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University, will introduce audience members to the Brontë family and the personal events that influenced each of their writings.

At 7pm in the Orem Library storytelling wing. Free

2. Another talk in Ashby, UK

Ashby Writers Club
Tues . 28. Apr. 2009

Speaker Helen Peden talking about Jane Eyre.
7.30pm at La Zouch Restaurant, Kilwardby Street. V
Visitors welcome at a nominal fee. More information from David Bell 01530 413371.

3. And an ongoing exhibition by Marci Washington in San Francisco with Brontë echoes according to the artist:

Marci Washington
"Dark Mirror"
April 9 - May 16, 2009
Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Picture: Marci Washington, The Letter, 2009, Watercolor, gouache on paper 18 1/4 x 22 1/2 in. (Source)

"I am interested in depicting a decadent society in the midst of crisis - to tell a story set in a time that is both past and present - a carefully constructed collapse of historical time capable of revealing what is common between our society now and societies in the past, as well as what is unique to our particular historical moment. In this work I am focusing on the commonalities between our time and Edwardian England, the decadent height of British imperialism, a time of empire for the sake of empire, on the eve of World War I and the beginning of the empire's decline.
Through the metaphors of the haunted house, the ancestral curse, and cannibalism/vampirism, I am exploring America's relationship to it's own past as well as that of imperial England as a haunting, a curse, and an ideological infection. I am interested in the cyclical nature of history as opposed to ideas of linear progress, especially how this relates to past and current ideas of American exceptionalism and the way those ideas have doomed us to repeat a history that we have felt entitled to ignore.
Through the metaphor of the ghost, I am exploring the role of repression in the building of societies at large. I am interested in repression's role in personal and national identity through the prescription of rigid social roles and simplistic cultural narratives, and in literalizing the return of the repressed and specter of the other in the form of hauntings. I am especially interested in the presence of surplus repression as a form of alienating social sickness indicating a tipping point where civilizing forces become excessive, restrictive and ultimately unstable.
I am building this story as if I am illustrating a novel that doesn't exist. If it did, it would probably be a lot like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Bleak House - novels which use the popular conventions of fiction in order to seduce you into a story which ultimately functions as social commentary. I would like to highjack the ideological function of fiction - appropriating the character types and narrative conventions in order to construct an allegorical tale capable of challenging the simplistic cultural narrative of our own time in order to reaveal a much darker tale of moral decline, spiritual crisis, and rampant anxiety, all lurking beneath the siren song of material desire fueling the "progress" of a capitalist society in decline."

Categories: Alert, Art-Exhibitions, Jane Eyre, Talks

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Edward Rochester, private eye

Now that Tamasha's Wuthering Heights is about to arrive in the Lyric Hammersmith, London, with all its Bollywood splendour, The Times runs an article on this production:

It's one of the most instantly recognisable titles in English fiction, but when Wuthering Heights arrives at the Lyric Hammersmith next week, precious little else about it will be familiar. Because the theatre company Tamasha has taken Brontë, wholesale, to Bollywood. Its adaptation of the classic, 19th-century tale of thwarted, illegitimate and, on occasion, frankly imponderable love is relocated to 1770s Rajasthan, where Cathy and Heathcliff are reincarnated as Shakuntala and Krishan, clad in silks and spangles, and the story is set to an all-new Bollywood score.
Tamasha's co-founder and Wuthering Heights director Kristine Landon-Smith insists that “it's such a perfect marriage of story and genre, it seems almost obvious. When Brontë meets Bollywood, it really works.”
The play's writer, Deepak Verma, once known to the nation as Sanjay in EastEnders, decided after a trip to the region that the Rajasthani deserts were just as romantic, foreboding and unforgiving as the blasted heath of Brontë's imagining. “From there,” he says, “all the pieces fell into place.” The repressive, corseted Victorian culture of the novel found a perfect foil in the rigid caste strictures of Indian society. Hinduism provided additional illuminating parallels: the inviolably sacred nature of a brother-sister relationship and the haunting consequence of not completing funerary rites, for instance. In the creeping evolution of the East India Company into a controlling nation state, Tamasha also discovered an intriguing new light in which to cast Cathy's pursed-lipped, respectable husband, Edgar Linton, here renamed Vijay, a tax collector and puppet of the British ruling classes.
“The love that is fated is the absolute classic Bollywood formula,” Landon-Smith explains. She noted, on watching William Wyler's 1939, Oscar-winning film of Wuthering Heights, starring the Indian-born Merle Oberon and the permanently furrowed, slightly sweaty brow of a young Laurence Olivier, that “it's full of these immediately recognisable Bollywood close-up moments”. Wuthering Heights, you recall, is a story in which a woman dies of a prolonged fit of pique, ghosts pop up whenever there's a high wind, and at a hint of rain at least two characters will be sure to come down with consumption. The kind of fictive caper, then, to which the excesses of Bollywood seem uniquely suited.
First published in 1847 under the authorial pseudonym Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë's only novel has inspired a raft of adaptations, from the Spanish director Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión in 1954 to an all-female Japanese opera, recently revived in Tokyo, and it has already been the subject of a large-scale, Bollywood interpretation, the 1966 India-wide release Dil Diya Dard Liya.
If these adaptations have met with a decidedly mixed reception, so too have a stack of high-profile attempts to splice Eastern form with Western content, such as Gurinder Chadha's luckless Jane Austen Bollywood spin in 2004, Bride and Prejudice.
“Crossovers fall down,” Landon-Smith says, “when they don't follow the transliteration through. It's vital that the original story remains absolutely visible, but you also have to deliver the Bollywood element. You have to hold both audiences in your mind at once. It's when the cultural specificity of the retelling is very real that the story can become truly universal.”
Tamasha should know. Now in its 20th year, it developed East is East, Ayub Khan-Din's stupendous social comedy of a mixed-race northern family, which had its premiere at the Royal Court in 1997 before becoming a hit indie film, and the company hasve produced a string of sell-out Anglo-Indian shows since.
Developing Wuthering Heights, however, has proved uniquely demanding. “We wanted it to sound authentically Indian,” Landon-Smith says, “but the songs also had to work within a Western musical theatre tradition,” which meant employing a three-tiered system of composers, arrangers and performers, and relaying samples between Basingstoke and Bangalore before prerecording the final score, which, in true Bollywood style, will be lip-synched on stage.
Pushpinder Chani, Krishnan/Heathcliff to Youkti Patel's Shakuntala/Cathy, has, surprisingly, found that skill the most difficult to master: “Lip-synching's way harder than it looks, but that's the key to Bollywood acting,” he chuckles, “that and trying not to look too stupid when you dance.”
“The landscape of the whole world changed with Slumdog Millionaire,” says Verma, who is determined to turn his play into a film. “The attention this is getting is just amazing.” And, whatever the fate of Tamasha's Wuthering Heights, he is probably right to predict, as India's economy continues to boom and its addiction to cinema shows no sign of waning: “Just wait. We haven't even touched the surface of this crossover phenomenon yet.” (Lucy Powell)

You can catch it in London from April 29th to May 23rd. After that they continue with their extensive UK tour.

Another seemingly implausible version of Wuthering Heights is mentioned in The Southland Times.

And now for something completely different: the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain has done a very different cover of Wuthering Heights. Check it out. It's irritatingly catchy. (Jillian Allison-Aitken)

Ann Cannon, from the Deseret News, writes a letter to Twilight's own Edward Cullen.

Oh, you make a great romantic lead. Classic, even. No doubt about it. In fact, I'd rank you right up there with Jane Eyre's Rochester and Catherine's Heathcliff and possibly even Elizabeth's Mr. Darcy, who (like you) obviously has excellent personal grooming skills. You're mysterious and aloof, and yet underneath it all? Wowza.

The Filipino SunStar quotes Anne Brontë:

"But he that dares not grasp the thorn," Anne Bronte advices, "should never crave the rose." (Henrylito D. Tacio)

These beautiful words come from a poem called The Narrow Way. We suggest you read the whole poem.

The Korean The Hankyoreh makes a curious, funny reference to Emily Brontë. We don't know how much of it is due to character-conversion, though.

The author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, used the pseudonym ¡°Action Bell¡± to circumvent prejudice against women writers. (Park Kyeong-sin)

What is surely not due to character-conversion is the fact that the original must have said Acton Bell. Acton Bell was actually Anne. Emily hid herself behind Ellis Bell. We love 'Action Bell' though.

A few blogs: Karen Johnson Summer Reading, CM, Children and Lots of Grace, 221B de Baker Street and El Espejo Gótico (these last two in Spanish) all write about Jane Eyre, the novel, and Klage rydde mase writes about Jane Eyre, the (mini-series) character. Captive Thoughts Book Club posts about the Brontës in general and Anne Brontë in particular. Frivolous Fragments has followed in Charlotte Brontë's/Lucy Snowe's footsteps in Brussels.

YouTube user robkemati has uploaded a two-part series whose synopsis is:

Meet Edward Rochester, a secret agent from Britain that was sent to Hatii to stop the inner turmoil. While there, he meets the lovely Jane Eyre, a French senator, and they quickly fall in love. Watch as Rochester partakes in wacky phenomenons while he attempts to take down the evil Mr. Brocklehurst, the leader of a brainwashing rebellion, and free the Hatiians from this tyranny. Will Jane and Rochester succeed, or will the revolutionaries doom the entire world?
This video uses characters from the novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

Part 1 and Part 2.

EDIT: An alert for today in Worcestershire, UK:

Jane Austen and the Brontës: 'Sense' versus 'Sensibility'
Farncombe Estate Centre
Broadway (Cotswolds)
Worcestershire, WR12 7LJ
Literature & Writing

27 April 2008 at 2:30 p.m.
With Angela Day
So much in common and yet so different: Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. We look at Austen’s "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice", Charlotte Bronte’s "Jane Eyre" and Emily Bronte’s "Wuthering Heights" and discuss this apparent paradox. Austen’s approach is through a rejection of excess of sentimentality – sense. The Bronte novels emphasise the power of the imagination – sensibility.

Categories: Alert, Anne Brontë, Books, Brussels, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Music, Poetry, Talks, Theatre, Villette, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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Encyclopedias, Gardens and Poetic Vocations

We present today encyclopedias, gardens and poetic vocations:

Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to Present, Second Edition, 2-Volume Set
Authored by George Stade and Karen Karbiener
Encyclopedia of British Writers, 16th-20th Centuries, 4-Volume Set
Facts on File (Infobase Publishing)
Available: 5/1/2009
ISBN-10: 0816073856
ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-7385-6

Encyclopedia of British Writers: 1800 to Present, Second Edition profiles almost 900 of the finest British poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, and other writers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. All entries in this new edition of the award-winning encyclopedia have been fully updated and expanded, almost 100 new entries have been added, and more than 100 new "Critical Analysis" sections have been added to major writers. Each entry includes essential details about the author’s life and work and suggestions for further reading. Entries on major writers include a "Critical Analysis" section that discusses one or more works in greater detail. Writers from Ireland and nations of the British Commonwealth are also included.

A valuable addition to any high school literature classroom or library, this comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia also features an author timeline, a general bibliography, and entries on key terms and movements of the century.

New entries include: * Anne Brontë

The Faber Book of Gardens
Philip Robinson
ISBN: 9780571224210
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Faber and Faber

The poetic appreciations of gardens by Andrew Marvell and John Keats sit alongside the horticultural passions of Frances Hodgson Burnett and the mythic power of gardens as described by Charlotte Bronte and William Blake. Editor and avid gardener Philip Robinson has paid attention to the small, private plot as much as the grand aristocratic and imperial gardens - from medieval Japan to English Landscape to suburban Arizona - and this collection is sure to inspire and enchant gardeners everywhere.

The aforementioned garden description is from Jane Eyre (Chapter XXIII).

And the memoir from poet Fanny Howe:

The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation
Howe, Fanny

ISBN: 9781555975203
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press

Through a collage of reflections on people, places, and times that have been part of her life, she shows the origins and requirements of "a vocation that has no name." She finds proof of this in the lives of others - Jacques Lusseyran who, though blind, wrote about his inner vision, surviving inside a concentration camp during World War II; the Scottish nun Sara Grant and Abbe Dubois, both of whom lived extensively in India where their vocation led them; and the English novelists Antonia White and Emily Bronte. With interludes referring to her own place and situation, Howe makes this book into a "progress" rather than a memoir.

Categories: Books, References

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Bertha's spam

The Times publishes an excerpt from the upcoming The Blue Hour: A portrait of Jean Rhys, by Lilian Pizzichini (to be published by Bloomsbury on May 5):

Jean Rhys’s earliest memory was of her mother bending over her crib, “smelling sweet in a low-cut black dress”, and kissing her. By the time Jean had become a young girl, however, this slim, pretty mother was a solid, frowning woman, austere and disapproving.

She was a “white Creole” – a member of the tiny white minority on Dominica, the Caribbean island – married to a Welsh doctor, and she had plenty to frown about. Her husband had developed a reckless attitude to money in his years in the tropics, and they had six children. She was already a harassed mother of three when Jean was born in 1890, and she had two more babies, by then into her forties. (Read more)

The Independent (Ireland) talks with the Irish celebrity couple Leigh Arnold and Marcus Sweeney:

"It is better if I don't go out, and stay at home and watch videos and eat lots of popcorn. And not hurt the world with my nastiness and my emotions," she laughs. "It is better to be in watching All About Eve, Rebecca or Wuthering Heights.''
Emily Bronte's only novel, Wuthering Heights, was the story that made Leigh Arnold want to be an actor, she says. "My ultimate role would be Cathy Earnshaw.'' As for her Heathcliff , Marcus Sweeney has, she says, "a genuine heart of gold. I have intense feelings for him.'' (Barry Egan)

The same newspaper has an article about how Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga attracts teenagers and their parents:

It has all the simmering undertones of desire you get in a Jane Austen novel coupled with the passion of Emily Bronte's saga, Wuthering Heights. Modernise this, add the fantasy element of the supernatural and set it against the backdrop of mundane, day-to-day life in a small town, high school goings on and relationships within the family dynamic. (Antonia Leslie)

Michael Kuser in The Sunday's Zaman (Turkey) finds a modern-day equivalent to the attic of Thornfield Hall:

OK, I said I’d look for it, and that’s how I ended up in my computer’s version of Mr. Rochester’s attic, the place where he hid his mad wife from Jane Eyre and everyone else. That’s right, I’m talking about my spam box.

After The Pig Did It, Joseph Caldwell returns to his porcine saga with The Pig Comes to Dinner which is reviewed in The Washington Times:

All these domestic shenanigans get in the way of Kathy's previously thriving literary career. She has profited handsomely from rewriting classics — for example, in "Jane Eyre," her version has Mr. Rochester dying in the fire and Jane becoming a close friend of his mad wife. She is currently working on a new version of George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" that she refers to as "The Bloody Mill on the Bloody Floss." (Muriel Dubbin)

Kevin Smokler posts a One Sentence Movie Review of Wuthering Heights 1939. The original book is reviewed on Scriptural (in French), Abijan defends on Bookstove that Nelly is someway responsible for Cathy's death in Wuthering Heights and أرصفــة posts about Jane Eyre 1996 and 2006 (in Arabic).

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

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Singing Emily's poetry

More Emily Brontë-inspired music:

1. The Anois CD "Emily Brontë" is now available:

The CD Emily Brontë includes a 22 page full-color booklet, with photo's and lyrics of all the songs.

1. How Clear She Shines
2. Song
3. Remembrance
4. I Know Not How
5. Stars
6. Cannot Go
7. Cathy's Theme
8. The Wanderer
9. Alone I sat
10. Tell Me
11. Lullaby
12. The Visionary
13. Last Words
14. No Coward Soul

It can be ordered here.


2. The Dutch singer and composer Nion is working on an album with musical settings of different poems. A rough (in his own description) demo (2-minute fragment) of his version of Emily Brontë's Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee can be listened here.


3. And the Italian composer vannellijo has uploaded to youtube a Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights musical base.


Categories: Emily Brontë, Music, Poetry, Wuthering Heights

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Heathcliff in the squadra azzurra

The Xavier Newswire talks about the final show of the Xavier Players’ 2009 season, “Workshop,” which included several plays written, directed and acted by students. Including

“Fishbone,” written by sophomore Brigid Gallagher and directed by sophomore Lisa Margevicius, presented many of my favorite segments of the night. “Fishbone” was a collection of skits that reinterpreted several literary classics. The skits exposed the bawdiness of many of literature’s most highly regarded works. The director and producer characters, played by juniors Lauren Brinkman and Santiago Segura, underscored the absurdity with humorous banter. The reinterpretations of “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre” were my favorites. Who doesn’t loving seeing junior Stuart McNeil dressed in drag? (Des Dale)

The Guardian talks about The Pop Confessional, the Friday competitions at The Bodega Social Club in Nottingham, UK. One of them is called Beat My Bush:

Basically customers are encouraged to get up on stage and mime (although we have had folk sing) their way through "Wuthering Heights" in a long flowing dress and wig, whilst the original video is projected onto a wall alongside. Subject to the state of our prop-box, there are usually two contestants (female or male) involved in this debacle.

The Merced Sun-Star talks about the book industry in Iraq illustrating the article with a picture of an Arabic translation of Jane Eyre at a recent book fair at Baghdad University. That Arabic translation was presented on BrontëBlog several months ago.

Jornal do Panorama (Brazil) has an article about the Brontë sisters. Golmania (Italy) begins an article about the Napoli football team with a quote from Wuthering Heights (!!). Página 12 (Argentina) talks about Jane Eyre 2006. El Diario de Xalapa (Mexico) publishes an alert for tomorrow, April 26. A new chance to listen to Julio César Oliva's Cumbres Borrascosas at the 5th Encuentro Internacional de Guitarra Xalapa 2009.

Le Nouvel Observateur remembers the thirtieth anniversary of the premiere (May 9, 1979) of André Téchiné's Les Soeurs Brontë:

Elles se sont donné la réplique pour la première fois dans «les Soeurs Brontë», d'André Téchiné. Il y a trente ans, exactement. La rumeur les disait rivales. Elles avaient à peu près le même âge.
On prétendait que, sur le tournage, leurs agents respectifs calculaient, chronomètre à la main, le nombre de gros plans dont le cinéaste voulait bien les gratifier. Dans son coin, le sémiologue Roland Barthes, qui jouait Thackeray et s'y connaissait en mythologies, comptait les points. Emily Brontë, c'était la noire Isabelle Adjani, devenue déjà une icône grâce à la Comédie-Française. Anne Brontë, c'était la rousse Isabelle Huppert, inscrite depuis «la Dentellière» dans le registre trompeur de l'effacement, de la transparence. (Jérôme Garcin) (Google translation)

The same magazine reviews Paris-Brest by Tanguy Viel and quotes a Brontë reference in the novel:

«Voilà comment débutait véritablement cette histoire, de cette manière énigmatique et bien sûr de cette manière romanesque, à l'enterrement de ma grand-mère, où on sentait bien qu'il allait se passer des choses violentes et tendues, des choses, disons, gothiques, parce que ce je voulais aussi, c'était que ça fasse comme un roman anglais du XIXe siècle, quelque chose comme “Les Hauts de Hurlevent”.

Film Music: The Neglected Art reviews the recent reissue of Michel Legrand's Wuthering Heights 1970 soundtrack:

Michel Legrand featured his Cathy or “Theme from Wuthering Heights” as the primary one, using it with delicacy for the flutes in the opening title, yearning strings, stately French horns, mixing it with other motifs such as “Rendezvous on the Moors,” “Castle Grounds,” and other instruments throughout the 46+ minute score. “Yorkshire Moors” uses the modern guitar to sound baroque like, an interesting orchestration that is mixed with the “Wuthering Heights” theme, flutes, harpsichord, a dissonant horn, and oboe. “Cathy’s Theme” is a lush romantic version of the “Theme from Wuthering Heights” offering many solos from the London Studio Orchestra members including harp, flute, violin, and oboe. “The Grange,” quite modern sounding like a traffic sequence is mixed with the gloomy harpsichord chords to make for an interesting mixture in this cue. “Hindley” is one of those tracks that is made up of several different smaller cues ranging from trumpet fanfares, lower register brass, “Theme from Wuthering Heights,” and church type music. The mixture works well as a nice underscore track. (sdtom)

View from the Stalls reviews the ongoing Tamasha Theatre's performances of Wuthering Heights at the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow and Internet Mandy Database vindicates Anne Brontë.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Potter Style Brontë stationery

Random House's stationery brand Potter Style has several Brontë-related new items in its catalogue:

Brontë Sisters Journal

* Format: Non-traditional book, 160 pages
* On Sale: October 7, 2008
* Price: $10.95
* ISBN: 978-0-307-40851-8 (0-307-40851-5)

Brontë Sisters Note Cards

* Format: Non-traditional book, 16 pages
* On Sale: October 7, 2008
* Price: $12.00
* ISBN: 978-0-307-40850-1 (0-307-40850-7)

Brontë Sisters Mini Journal
* Format: Non-traditional book, 128 pages
* On Sale: April 7, 2009
* Price: $8.00
* ISBN: 978-0-307-45083-8 (0-307-45083-X)

Actually, the quote comes from Villette (ch. XXVII), though the quote on the cover is not verbatim, as the original reads 'Who has words at the right moment?' Not that we mind much, as the design for all these products is quite nice.

Categories: Villette, Weirdo

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Gyles Brandreth at the Sloane Club

An alert for today, April 25, in London:

Saturday 25th April Literary Lunch: with lecture from new Brontë Society President Gyles Brandreth at the Sloane Club, London. Contact peter.morrison@bronte.org.uk or 01535 640195.

Categories: Alert, Talks

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The relevance of Charlotte Brontë today is untouched

We open today our newsround with an article in The Central Plains Herald-Leader. Its very existence is one of the reasons why this blog was born:

I should’ve been called Jane. Don’t get me wrong, Tara is a great name, and I’ve grown quite accustomed to it, but it is Jane that has influenced my life, and not just one Jane, but two, and because of that, Tuesday was an auspicious day for me — it was Charlotte Bronte’s birthday.
Charlotte was born in 1816 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire in England. In 1847, she wrote a book that changed her life and the lives of many people after her: "Jane Eyre." This book, and the woman who wrote it, have made a huge impression on my life. (The other Jane who has influenced me, influenced Charlotte as well … Jane Austen, but that is a topic for another day). "Jane Eyre’s" influence over me is best described by someone else — a Victorian journalist named Margaret Oliphant, who put it better than I could: "Ten years ago we professed an orthodox system of novel-making. Our lovers were humble and devoted, when suddenly, without warning, ‘Jane Eyre’ stole upon the scene, and the most alarming revolution of modern times has followed the invasion of ‘Jane Eyre.’"
The story of "Jane Eyre" is the tale of a governess who goes to a horrific boarding school where she watches her best friend die, then she finds a job as a governess for a wealthy man, falls in love with him, is to marry him, discovers he is hiding his "crazy" first wife, Bertha, in the attic and leaves, once again having to find her own way in the world. I won’t divulge the rest of the story in order not to spoil it for those of you who haven’t had the luxury of diving into this book.
Charlotte’s book was no sentimental novel of manners; it was raw, gritty and real. Charlotte was angry when she wrote her famous novel. She was angry that as the unmarried daughter of a country clergyman with small means, the only options open to her were marriage, teaching or being a governess. Her story is considered by many to express unladylike female rage, born of all the oppression present in society, but it is more than that, too. For me, the story of "Jane Eyre" shows the boundlessness of the imagination and the ability to put pen to paper to effect change, something I strive to do every day in my job as a journalist. Charlotte made many people uncomfortable, which, I hope, I have, on occasion, done. She made them so uncomfortable that they liked to think she must have been a social outcast. They never would have pegged her for a respectable clergyman’s daughter entrenched in the society they were a part of. I think the best way to reflect on the way people think is to do so from within, as Charlotte did. If you are like them, you can see the foibles you all are prone to, you can see the prejudices and the redeeming qualities, and are then able to paint for those people, in stark detail, what they are a part of. Even if someone disagrees, at least they’ve stopped to think for a moment about their philosophies or actions.
The relevance of Charlotte today is untouched. Her social commentary is still reflective of our society. Despite all the musings posted every micro-second on the Internet and the images glaring at us every night from the television, the written word is still what has the power to last, to evoke change so deep that it is still at work centuries later.
Thank you, Charlotte, for being so angry you just had to write something down. (Tara Seel)

On Discover Magazine we read an interview to Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey. We are pleasantly surprised when we read:

Do you ever read anything longer than 140 characters?
I just finished Wuthering Heights, an amazing book. (Interview by Boonsri Dickinson)

The South Yorkshire Star publishes an article promoting the virtues of Hathersage and among other things, the article mentions:

Tourists are drawn by the village's literary connections – many of the locations in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre match real places in Hathersage and the supposed grave of Robin Hood's sidekick Little John can be found in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels' church. (Richard Blackledge)

And the wonders of Bradford are explored in The Guardian:

It also scores exceptionally well for Morris dancing troupes, tea rooms and even holiday camps, with a cluster of small centres for children and families in the district's outlying areas around the Bronte village of Haworth and Ilkley Moor. (Martin Wainwright)

and this other article:

They remind the world how much of the Bradford district is countryside, and grade A countryside at that: the landscape of the Brontes, the Railway Children and invigorating walks on Ilkley Moor. (Martin Wainwright)

BoxOfficeProphets talks about Martin Scorsese's new project, an adaptation of the novel Shutter Island (Denis Lehane):

Well then, Mr. or Ms. Film Aficionado, let me ask you this: if I told you that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio were teaming up for their fourth collaboration, would you have ever guessed that it would be on a movie based on a book that combines Gothic settings and B-movie archetypes with a plot inspired by the works of the Brontë sisters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers? (Jason Lee)

The comparison was originally made by the author himself.

Of Books and Bicycles reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Lost in Dream has written a poem inspired by Jane Eyre in Chinese, Brontës.nl announces the upcoming broadcast of Jane Eyre 2006 in the Netherlands next June (more details here) and miss_callahan has uploaded several icons of this production.

Categories: Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights

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