Jane Eyre: the great-grandmother of all premarital suspense stories

The long, long shadow of the Brontës: Brontëite Maureen Corrigan reviews the book Lullaby by Claire Seeber The Washington Post and says,

At this crucial moment, "Lullaby" could go several ways: It could become a feminist-inflected legal thriller. (Jess yanks a Lucian Freud off a nearby gallery wall and bludgeons Mickey to death for his male insensitivity. After a tense trial, she's exonerated by a jury of lactating mothers.) It could mutate into a crime noir. (As she guzzles Slim-Fast and sheds pounds, Jess begins larding Mickey's meals until he's the one who's pudgy and depressed.) Or it could lope off, as it does, in the promising direction of Daphne du Maurier's grandmother of all marital suspense stories, "Rebecca" (which itself paid homage to that great-grandmother of all premarital suspense stories, "Jane Eyre").

Another Brontëite writer can be found on Salt Lake City Romance Novels Examiner: Tina Donahue.

Do you remember the first Romance novel you read? Do you have a favorite that remains your guiding star?
I guess the first romance novels I read were in school and the classics: Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. Amazing stories. (Fran Lee)

And there's even more Brontë love for today coming from a column in The California Aggie.

Yes, the fact that I'm only 20 and already thinking about love and forever does register, but that's just how manipulated I've been. My favorite genre of film is the romantic comedy. Austen and Brontë dominate my bookshelf. I've officially appointed Taylor Swift as the narrator of my life. See, I'm a hopeless romantic - emphasis on the hopeless. (Mario Lugo)

The Guardian features several artists who simply have to have a day job apart from their artistic side in order to live. One of them is young actress Lainy Scott:

Scott is getting work; her CV is loaded with parts in fringe theatre and short films, ­including lead roles in recent ­productions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But with £11,000 in fees to ­repay for her postgraduate acting course at Birmingham School of Acting, she has also had to take on day jobs. (Laura Barnett)

Click here to read more about that Jane Eyre production.

The Guardian also uses quite a roundabout way to reach just one simple word: prequel.

Because Rock & Chips (BBC1) is to Only Fools and Horses what The Wide Sargasso Sea is to Jane Eyre – ie, a prequel. (Sam Wollaston)

The New York Times Travel section has an article on the National Portrait Gallery and the Brontës - 'residents' there as you know - are mentioned. Big Hollywood chooses William Wyler, director of Wuthering Heights 1939, as one of the 'top ten greatest directors of all time'.

Jane Eyre 2006 is doing well on the blogosphere as evidenced by A Love for Literature, Slice of Life and johnsrant.com. Meanwhile, The Squeee reviews a previous Jane Eyre, that of 1996, and Shelved discusses the actual novel. Both Vintage Reads and Fruto Vermelho (in Portuguese) post about Emily Brontë. And via U Reader we have come across the 1993 Charlotte and Emily Brontë: The Complete Novels which has an awful, awful cover (in our humble opinion, that is).

Categories: Brontëites, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights