Hawking, Campion, Wilson...

The Independent chooses Brontë Country as the destination of the week:

"Bradford 22" is the postal location of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, where Anne, Charlotte and Emily were brought up. The path to Top Withens, the setting for Emily's novel Wuthering Heights, begins next to the Parsonage. (...)
The Brontë Parsonage Museum (01535 642323; bronte.org.uk) is a further eight miles away, accessible via the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway (01535 645 214; kwvr.co.uk), as featured in the Railway Children.

The First Tuesday Book Club from ABC TV (Australia) discusses Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. You can see the clip or read the transcript here:

Jennifer Byrne: OK, so, the two things I loved about this book when I first read it was the reframing device, the fact that, and I think it was the first time I'd read that, that where a character, in this case Mrs Rochester, mad Bertha, you heard her story. This has happened many times since but that was exciting. The second was, I think the sheer decadence of it. It drips, it reeks, it's the, you know, the heavy perfume of the hyacinth and the ginger lily, the cool sheets as the slanted sun comes through the blind. It is just reeking with poison and sweat and lust and madness. Perfect for a 20-year-old, really, fantastic. Going back, it kind of creeped me out. It was more extreme than I remember, but that's enough to be going on with. What did you think, Cate? (Read more)

John Bowen in the Times Literary Supplement reviews some literature companions. He mentions John Sutherland's Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction

Sutherland's 900-strong Victorian army becomes a rump of nine: Dickens, two Brontës, Gaskell, Thackeray, Trollope, Hardy, Stevenson and James.

and discusses Adrian Poole's Cambridge Companion to English Novelists:

Although Emily Brontë and Laurence Sterne are included on the grounds of one invincible masterpiece each, a good deal of the grit and quirks of the novel's history are lost.

The Nidderdale Herald announces a talk about the Brontës by Isobel Stirk, organized by the Birstwith Women's Institute:

Next month we look forward to our 70th birthday with a talk on the Brontës by Mrs Stirk followed by appropriate celebrations! (Debbie Britton)

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin is reviewed by The Southland Times quoting some of Jane Eyre tweets:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre ("I wish my parents had died impressively. Like Harry Potter; that kid's got one hell of an orphan story")[.] (Jillian Allison-Aitken)

The Brisbane Times describes thus the Blue Room from the Brooklyn Arts Hotel in Fitzroy:

It has more unusual furniture - a little Asiatic here, a little Wuthering Heights there - a comfortable queen-size bed and a long bookcase holding Fooke's gardening books. (Andrew Stephens)

La Nueva España (and La Voz de Asturias) (Spain) talks about the presentation of the latest book by Carmen Gómez Ojea, El Monte de la Calavera:

El escritor [Víctor Alperi] alabó la personalidad rebelde de la autora y la ubicó literariamente en el tronco común de Emily, «la más inquieta y apasionada de las hermanas Brontë, que, desde sus "Cumbres borrascosas" parece que nos llama, que lanza un mensaje necesario contra el conformismo actual». (P. Rubiera) (Google translation)

According to La Nación (Chile) we have a very illustrious Brontëite. No other than the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking:

¿Cuáles son sus libros favoritos, y qué está leyendo actualmente?
-Me gustan mucho los narradores clásicos como Jane Austen, Charles Dickens y los libros como “Cumbres borrascosas” (Emily Brontë). Actualmente estoy terminando la nueva novela de Ian McEwan (“Solar”). (Google translation)

Another Brontëite is French actor Lambert Wilson according to Le Journal de Dimanche:

Les Hauts de Hurlevent? Il aime, il adore. Il en veut encore: de la littérature anglaise et du grand romantisme. (Delphine de Malherbe) (Google translation)

And film director Jane Campion who in an interview to the Polish Życie Warszawy says:

„Jaśniejsza od gwiazd” jest efektem pani wieloletniej fascynacji listami Johna Keatsa do Fanny Brawne. Każdy z pani filmów powstaje pod wpływem osobistego doświadczenia poezji czy literatury?
Jane Campion: Rzeczywiście, impulsem dla wielu z moich filmów jest przeżywanie literatury, nawet jeśli nie adaptuję konkretnej książki. Uwielbiam prozę George Eliot i wiersze Emily Dickinson, kocham twórczość sióstr Bronte. Te inspiracje są zapisane głęboko we mnie, ale fascynują mnie różne światy. (Urszula Lipińska) (Google translation)

Nord-Éclair (France) talks about a curious experience in Lille medical school:

Les étudiants devaient au départ choisir un extrait de roman, de pièce de théâtre ou de film ayant un rapport avec les maladies mentales, explique Ghislaine Villebasse, ensuite, je les ai regroupés par groupe et ils ont dû créer une scénette de 10 à 15 minutes à partir des extraits qu'ils avaient choisis. » Au final, cela donne un patchwork original avec L'Avare de Molière qui croise les Hauts de Hurlevent d'Emily Brontë ou L'Armée des 12 singes de Terry Gilliam. (Google translation)

The Hungarian web Libri.hu is doing a poll to determine the the most popular books of the past decade (the Aranykönyve). Among the foreign fiction books we can find Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The poll closes tomorrow, May 9.

The Daily Mail gives some hints for the next episodes of Coronation Street in Brontë country; the Guardian's Theatre Blog continues recommending the Watermill performances of Polly Teale's Brontë. Noticias de Álava (Spain) complains about the quality of the movie adaptations and the Spanish translations of Wuthering Heights. Página 12 (Argentina) publishes an excerpt of the upcoming La niña guerrera y otras historias reales by Laura Ramos which contains a Jane Eyre reference.

A Girl As Mad as Birds has some suggestions for Brontë-related cross-stitch; placeholder reviews Wide Sargasso Sea and Gatos con Delirios de Poeta posts about Wuthering Heights in Spanish; Adventures with Kindle is reading Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights