Tangled up indeed

This article from the Otago Daily Times concerning the upcoming (April 10) opening of a Wuthering Heights (Jane Thornton's adaptation) production in Dunedin, New Zealand is somewhat shocking to say the least:

They say every artist gives something of themselves to one of their creations, but Peter King has a different connection with his latest work.
As head of design at Dunedin's Fortune Theatre, Mr King was charged with making the set for Wuthering Heights.
What made the experience special for him was his family link to the novel's author, Emily Bronte.
He is understood to be Bronte's great-great-great-grandson.
Emma Branwell, his great-great-grandmother, was thought to be an illegitimate Bronte child.
She married Thomas King and moved from England to New Zealand.
A fragment of a story by Charlotte Bronte, Emma, was about an illegitimate child and referred to people who settled far from their land of birth, and the Bronte Society of England acknowledged an illegitimate daughter was born to one of the Bronte siblings.
This "strange enigma" was discovered by Mr King's cousin about 20 years ago while she was putting together a family tree and relationships "got a bit tangled up".
He thought it was "quite cool" and "interesting" to be connected to such a well-known literary family.
While "none of us can write for nuts", many of his family shared Bronte ailments, including asthma. (Ellie Constantine)

Step by step and not taking very seriously the asthma thing, the Brontë Society acknowledged an illegitimate daughter born from a Brontë sibling? Excuse me? The only thing here is the claim that Branwell Brontë may have fathered a daughter when he was tutor in the Lake District, which Juliet Barker dismisses in her biography The Brontës and then there's Phyllis Cheney, who claims that her great grandmother, Mary Ann Judson (b 1839) was the illegitimate child of Branwell Brontë and Martha Judson, from Haworth.

Precisely, tomorrow April 1, the Dunedin City Library will host a reading from the play:

A sneak preview from the Fortune Theatre.
The classic tortured love story of Heathcliff and Cathy adapted for stage with an ensemble cast.
Breathless, modern and sexy.
Join us afterward for light refreshments and an opportunity to mix with the cast.

* Thursday 1 April 12.30pm
* Ground Floor, City Library
* Free (Saucy Reading)

This Santa Rosa Press-Democrat article mentions afternoon tea and Emily Brontë:

The roots of this meal, accurately known as afternoon tea, are in England, of course. I was, at the time, a graduate student of literature, reading Emily Bronte, D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy and I am certain that our afternoons mirrored a desire I had to merge into those well-loved books. (Michele Anna Jordan)

The Bookseller announces a new edition of Wuthering Heights by White's Books that will be published next August:

White’s Books is publishing pocket-sized hardbacks of classic titles including Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island, featuring introductions from the likes of Ian Rankin and Jacqueline Wilson.
The publisher will release three Pocket Classics a month from August. The first books, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, are out on 4th August priced £6.99.
The books’ covers have been designed by Joe McLaren with embossed illustrations on the front and back. The titles feature coloured endpapers, decorated title pages, marker ribbons and new typsetting.
Each book will have a 2,000-word introduction by a contemporary author. The books will also contain a reader’s guide, providing background information about the book and its author, suggested discussion questions for book groups, recommended websites and further reading including titles that have been influenced by the classic. The reader’s guide has been created by Susan Osborne, book review editor of Waterstone’s Book Quarterly and author of Bloomsbury’s Essential Guide for Reading Groups.
Jon Jackson, publisher of White’s Books, said he selected contemporary authors to write introductions who were either influenced by the classic in question or loved the book. (Graeme Neill)

We don't know if the new edition will have a new cover but the previous one was designed by Celia Birtwell, not by Joe McLaren. The Boston Bibliophile has a post about different Jane Eyre editions including White's Book's.

San Diego News Network has visited Claude Monet's garden and looks back on other visits to famous artistic/literary houses:

I had visited homes of famous writers, and found that exciting and rewarding — to step on the floorboards in Dickens’ house, and know he probably heard the same squeak — or to gaze out the upstairs nursery window in the Bronte parsonage, and see the moors as Charlotte, Emily, and Anne did. But the idea of visiting the great Claude Monet’s garden and home — actually seeing his inspiration and creation — seemed overwhelming. (Karen Kenyon)

Hollywood Life uses Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights to spice up headlines:

R-Patz — You Look Hotter Than Heathcliff Filming Your New Movie ‘Bel Ami’!
Forget Wuthering Heights! R-Patz’s sexiness is going to make his new movie Bel Ami hotter than hot! (Bonnie Fuller)

The Christian Science Monitor quotes Anne Brontë's poem The Narrow Way (April 1848) in an article about roses:

For instance, Anne Bronte wrote: “He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.” (Lynn Hunt)

The actual stanza says:

On all her breezes borne
Earth yields no scents like those;
But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.

To this journalist of The New Straits (Malaysia) the Twilight saga is not very interesting:

Go watch the film. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (544 pages, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) So bad that it might have even ruined Wuthering Heights. Boring girl meets boring boy who turns out to be just a boring vampire.

On the blogosphere. Posts about Wuthering Heights: on christinapomoni, The List! and Conspiração das Letras (in Portuguese). About Jane Eyre: My Literary Cannon Adventure, Feminist Mom in Montreal (who concentrates on the Lowood School). Finally, Hubpages has added a Haworth one.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights