A Literary Haj

We think that this journalist in The Babble Magazine was not expecting the reply given by author Elizabeth Gilbert:

You did a lot of research on auntie-hood for this book — we learn, for example, that Leo Tolstoy and Truman Capote and all the Brontë sisters were raised by their childless aunts after their real mothers died or abandoned them. Where’d you go for your research?
I found it in a really great book called The Complete Book of Aunts, a wonderful little book that’s all anecdotes about aunties written by an auntie. It’s very sweet. (Tammy La Gorce)

A lot of research indeed.

The Philadelphia Daily News talks with Masterpiece Theater's executive producer Rebecca Eaton about the new schedule of programs:

In the first season of the rebranded "Masterpiece," "Classic" "just took off like a rocket. Because of Jane Austen. Completely, the best ratings we've had in years, because of Jane Austen," she said. "'Contemporary' didn't do much business that season."
Now, though, it's "Masterpiece Mystery!" - which once stood alone as a show - that seems to have piqued viewers' interest.
"It's really, really gotten a foothold, and the audience has grown. And interestingly, 'Contemporary' is beginning to develop its own audience. That's the new thing, and people didn't know what it was. Very slowly, that's beginning to develop an audience," she said.
And while younger women may tune in for Austen, "We've added men when we've done 'Contemporary' and we've added men to 'Mystery!' " she said.
"We did it to make the program more accessible. And accessible meaning people could understand when to see the kind of programming they liked, rather than what I call the whiplash effect of having Jane Austen one week, ["Prime Suspect's"] Jane Tennison the next week and 'Jane Eyre' the next week," Eaton said. (Ellen Gray)

Orlando Weekly reviews Pedro Almodóvar's Los Abrazos Rotos and makes a Brontë reference:

Without giving anything away, let’s just say that a dastardly film editor and an uncomfortably bad reception at a movie premiere hardly stand next to the consequences in other star-crossed love stories like Wuthering Heights or Tristan and Isolde. (Justin Strout)

Associated Content makes a (foreseeable) prediction for this year:

Twilight Saga personalities will meet the characters of Vampire Diaries in 2010. Bella and Elena will start a book club, with their first book choice being Wuthering Heights. (Kate Kirkman)

168 hours recovers a post about the similarities between the Book of Ruth and Jane Eyre. This is ME, Ad Absurdum, Too Gallant, Cloudberry Jam (in Finnish) and Just Sporadic Thoughts have read or are reading Wuthering Heights. The Robert Moss BLOG tells a curious anecdote concerning an edition of Charlotte Brontë's The Professor or Eric Christiansen's The Northern Crusades. Lady Jo posts a hagiography of Rochester. Finally, the Penguin Group USA Blog publishes an article by Sheila Kohler about her book Becoming Jane Eyre:

As my daughter and I walked side by side, tilting our umbrellas into the rain and wind, crossing the bleak but beautiful moors that still surround Haworth, I noticed that the signs to the familiar footpaths where the Bronte children had trodden, were also in Japanese. Indeed, walking beside us under a lowering grey sky, were Japanese tourists as well as others who had come, pilgrims like us in this literary haj from many parts of the world. (Read more)

Categories: Fiction, Jane Eyre, References, The Professor, Wuthering Heights