Behind the scenes at the (Brontë Parsonage) Museum

If you are in the Haworth area, you might be interested in this post from the Brontë Parsonage Blog:

Would you be interested in finding out more about the Brontë Parsonage Museum and its remarkable collection? … discovering what goes on behind the scenes at the museum? … learning new skills and meeting writers, artists and visitors to Haworth and the museum from around the world?
The Brontë Parsonage Museum will be launching a volunteer programme shortly and is looking for volunteers to work as Museum stewards at the Parsonage. Those with some free time are being invited to put themselves forward as volunteer stewards, to work hours during the day, between Monday and Friday. Full training will be given.
As well as offering enjoyable, interesting and useful experience, volunteers will also receive various benefits including free admission to Brontë Society events. This initiative is part of a Heritage Lottery funded project which has involved various improvements being made to the historic rooms of the Parsonage, but also a range of activity to try and involve local people in the work of the museum.
The Parsonage is a fascinating place to work and volunteer stewards will have the chance to find out at close quarters, more about their local heritage and about the museum’s collection, which is constantly developing. Working directly with visitors to the museum and the chance to meet visiting authors and artists will I’m sure make this a very rewarding opportunity.
Andrew McCarthy
Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

We wouldn't hesitate!

The Brontë Parsonage Blog also has a post on Maddalena De Leo's recent talk linking an aspect of Parmenides' thought to Emily Brontë’s poetry.

The Huffington Post reviews Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope (or its US title The Hypochondriacs).

For once the author -- who never identifies himself as hypochondriacal, but why else indulge in such unnecessary woe? -- gets an introduction out of the way, he tells the medical histories and mysteries of those "tormented lives." The nine memorialized are, in more or less chronological order: James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust (probably the least surprising inclusion), Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol. [...]
A significant point Dillon makes throughout a book that qualifies as a concise history of hypochondria is that the hypochondriac's profile changes over the centuries -- but not entirely. Some of the same nagging worries plaguing Boswell, Bronte and Darwin continue to be a source of concern to, for instance, Glenn Gould. (David Finkle)

The Washington Post begins the review of another book, Eight White Nights by André Aciman, as follows:

For all of love's happy advance notices, for all of its dewy-eyed hype, it's the difficult love -- unrequited, hard-won, gone wrong -- that makes for a good story. There is something irresistible about romance in the face of open warfare: "Romeo and Juliet," "A Farewell to Arms," "Doctor Zhivago." Or a love kissed by tragedy and doom: "Anna Karenina," "La Bohème." Even if the story is rescued by a happy ending -- "Jane Eyre," say, or "Persuasion" -- how much sweeter if the road to it is a living hell. (Marie Arana)

The New York Times has an article on Najla Said’s one-woman Off Broadway show Palestine which began previews last Saturday.

Her mother, Mariam Cortas, is Lebanese and was brought up Quaker. She and Mr. Said, a professor of English and comparative literature who was born in Jerusalem but left the Middle East as a teenager, bonded over books like “Jane Eyre,” not discussions of Orientalism. In the play Ms. Said recalls her Christian father fondly as a “cute old guy,” dapper in a three-piece suit, playing tennis, driving a Volvo and smoking a pipe. (Felicia R. Lee)

And then there are the two sides of reading the classics. One side of the coin comes from Education Week:

Frequent, voluminous reading of young-adult literature also provides the background and experience that enable some of my students to read classics—Pride and Prejudice, The Odyssey, All Quiet on the Western Front, Jane Eyre—with understanding and pleasure. (Nancie Atwell)

And the other side of the coin comes from The Harvard Crimson:

There is no novel so great that I cannot put it down. I made it through a hundred and fifty pages of “War and Peace.” I called it quits on “Moby Dick” after the sixth chapter on the subtle complexities of whale oil. “Wuthering Heights” withered after seventy pages. “Gravity’s Rainbow” only lasted nine. I’ve accumulated a pretty impressive list of books that I’ve stopped reading. In fact, my growing catalog rivals many lists of the greatest novels ever written. (Theodore J. Gioia)

The Herald has an article on (really) young love and uses Wuthering Heights as an example:

There are sympathetic friendships between girls and boys – Pip and Estelle in Great Expectations, David and Agnes in David Copperfield, Cathy and Heathcliff in Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – but no romance until they are teenagers. (Colette Douglas-Home)

This post of ours is a witness to the good opinions generated by Ruth Barrett's soundtrack for Wuthering Heights 2009. So it is quite interesting to see her speaking about what makes a good tune on BBC News Magazine:

Ruth Barratt [sic] has written music for a number of dramas, including Wallander and Wuthering Heights.
"A good theme tune has got to be something that is really memorable... if Joe Bloggs down the street can whistle it after a couple of times then you're onto a winner."
For Ms Barratt, the key is devising something which captures the spirit of the show, something Johnny Dankworth did with the original theme to The Avengers. (Rajini Vaidyanathan)

Nothing to do with Ruth Barrett, of course, but coincidentally Metal Underground announces that the Danish band Wuthering Heights will release a new record in the coming months.

Wuthering Heights - the novel - is the subject of posts on Bookish and Books I Have Read. Things She Read writes about The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. And Echostains posts bout the recently-acquired Brontëana items, which can now be seen at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Categories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Poetry, Talks, Wuthering Heights