In a Brontë novel

Not much to report today. The Financial Times shows interest in Andrew Odlyzko's Collective Hallucinations and Inefficient Markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s. The paper is examined and the eminent shareholders named:

Railway stocks shed two-thirds of their value after 1845, with the index of shares ending up below where it had been before the first mania commenced in 1835. Railway shareholders, including the Brontë sisters and Charles Darwin, suffered painfully. (Edward Chancellor)

Edward A. Iannuccilli from The Providence Journal says that putting pen to paper feels Brontë-ish:

So, now that’s what I try to do: send a hand-written note or letter. I use Parker blue-black ink that gurgles when I fill one of my fountain pens. I hold the paper and the pen like that person in the movie, wait a moment, bend my wrist and then try to sweep the strokes like Miss Casey would want. I pause at intervals to bring the pen to my nose to smell the ink at its tip while thinking of school days and of the person to whom I am writing. (Do you remember having pen pal?) I feel as if I am in a Bronte novel or that old English movie with a camera over my shoulder. There is a special pleasure in holding a fountain pen and having it respond to your thoughts.

The blogosphere is livelier though: Kindred Spirit Book Group discusses Agnes Grey and includes pictures of a 1877 edition. Wuthering Heights is the subject matter on The Frozen Shape of Human Courage, Asmit's Opinion, Reclamando de tudo (in Portuguese) and uncoindeblog (in French). Overkill went to see Wuthering Heights on stage at the Fortune Theatre (Dunedin, New Zealand). The World of Romance posts briefly about Romancing Miss Brontë (stay tuned to BrontëBlog next week for our review) and the wrongly renamed Charlotte and Emily: A Novel of the Brontës (the much more appropriate original name was The Taste of Sorrow), by Jude Morgan. Miss Bibliophile writes briefly about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre and Bitten By Books reviews the forthcoming Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin.

Categories: Books, Victorian Era