Saturday's Piano Sonata

The Yorkshire Post carries an article about yesterday's Brontë piano recital at the Parsonage:

Picture Source. Picture Credits: Tony Johnson.
A piano that once provided the musical backdrop to the lives of the Brontë family is back at their former family home in Haworth where it was last played more than 160 years ago.
The cabinet piano was lent to Mr Grant, the curate of Oxenhope, by Patrick Brontë after his literary children's deaths, and sold at an auction in 1861. It then passed through numerous hands before being put up for sale at Sothebys in 1916 as part of the collection of JH Dixon.
Mr Dixon's wife was not satisfied with the offer. She withdrew the piano from the sale, presenting it instead to the Brontë Museum in memory of her husband. While valued as an historic relic, little interest was taken in it as a musical instrument and it could no longer be played.
Now it has been restored by a specialist funded by an American Brontë Society member.
Back in playing order and at home in the Museum, Maya Irgalina from the Royal Northern College of Music used the piano to accompany singer Catherine McDonald.
Last night, the piano was also used in a concert of music from the Haworth archive.
Further events being planned so more people can hear the piano.

Fassinating Fassbender has interviewed... Michael Fassbender. Our next Rochester describes his character in Jane Eyre like this:

Well, I don’t know, I basically think that he’s such an interesting character. He’s not like Heathcliff at all, but they have these layers, they are dangerous, they’re complex, it’s interesting you know they have a journey, we meet them and something has happened in his past that we know about, and he carries that with him, he’s like a Byronic hero. Which are quite interesting, she was very much influenced by Lord Byron, and so he’s dark, he’s cruel, he’s arrogant, he’s intelligent, he’s sort of without a social standing so even though he is of the aristocracy he doesn’t really like that crowd. He doesn’t see the barriers between the social classes as it were, so he’s quite a fair person, and in some respect I like that. At the end of it all, he’s got a good heart, they have darker traits as oppose to the sort of more classical hero.
The first thing that sort of struck me and I thought was quite interesting about Rochester, is that he seems to be sort of bi-polar, his emotions are very skittish and can go from high to low very quickly. And once again, he’s sort of really interesting, he’s too good a character to pass up. He’s got too many good ingredients involved again. And Cary [Fukunaga], I’ve seen his film, 'Sin Nombre', and I loved that, and I saw that last year. And then Mia Wasikowska, who is just amazing, that girl is the future of acting. She’s 20 years old , she’s such an original, she’s so much fun, super smart and mature. I mean, I really can’t say enough about her, she’s really something special. So I think she’s done an absolute quintessential Jane, and perfect. And hopefully I can keep up with Rochester. (Simone)

Precisely, PVR Pictures has acquired the Indian rights of Jane Eyre 2011 according to The Hollywood Reporter and Kinepolis Film Distribution has the rights in the Benelux (SterrenNieuws).

The Times reviews The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister:

But here in the 21st century, a TV adaptation of [Anne Lister's] story advents in a flurry of prurient interest: the advance frisson has it as Jane Austen with muff diving; Wuthering Heights with, instead of Heathcliff, Miss Cliff. (Caitlin Moran)

Hello Magazine has an article devoted to the the wonders of Yorkshire:

Yorkshire: an English hideaway
Yorkshire, the largest county in England, and one of the greenest, is a great place to make an escape from the daily grind, with precedents set by literary icons both real and fictional. (...)
1. Reliving Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights, the immortal tale that was Emily Brontë's only novel, is set against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors. Early on, Mr Lockwood, the narrator, writes in his journal, "This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society." And it is surely only in such a vast natural wilderness that such a story of love and alienation, cruelty and passion could have taken place. Here the Pennine Hills - the backbone of England - are always at hand, waiting to be explored, and prepared to offer the perfect location for your next getaway.
Don't miss: Keighley & Worth Valley Light Railway, Red House Museum at Gomersal and Salts Mill in Saltaire.

Travel Video News also devotes an article to Yorkshire.

The North Shore Times talks about children authors Belinda Murrell and Kate Forsyth and their many Brontë influences:

THEY grew up reading the books of the Brontës and now two sisters raised on the North Shore are bestselling children’s authors.
As girls, Belinda Murrell and Kate Forsyth began writing hand-illustrated novels in exercise books and dreamt of growing up to be like England’s Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
But their younger brother Nick, who has also had work published, makes up their writing trio. (...)
“Our childhood was full of books because gran was an English teacher and Mum was a born storyteller,” Murrell, 46, said.
“They used to tell us about the Brontë sisters and they were role models for us.
“Although we didn’t live on a moor we were brought up on a classical book diet.
“We were always encouraged to write plays and stories, and mum used to ask us to write a poem for someone’s birthday.”
They come from a literary family, with a history of Australian writers stretching back 180 years.
Their great-great-great-great-great grandfather James Atkinson published a book on Australia in 1826, while his wife Charlotte published the first Australian children’s book in 1841.
Their three daughters were also writers and artists and have been referred to as the Brontës of Australia. (Kat Adamski)

The Telegraph interviews author Jackie Kay who recalls a personal experience with some Brontës in it:

She’d been zipping along on her Honda, putting off O-level revision and singing Billy Ocean’s Love Really Hurts Without You, and then she went flying through the air and into a graveyard. She spent the long slow hours of recovery reading. Jane Eyre: adopted. Heathcliff: adopted. Holden Caulfield: misunderstood. (Helen Brown)

The Quietus publishes an extract from the latest novel of Tariq Goddard, The Picture Of Contented Wealth which includes a Brontë reference:

Dr Graves-Maurice had bought Tyger Tyger at the turn of the last century seeking a second career as a watercolour artist. Schoolmaster Motley had followed him thinking that the house’s seclusion would aid him in his ambition to become a male Brontë; and Maureen Crompton, more modestly, thought that the country air would save her ailing health. Others had followed in the belief that they had simply purchased a sound investment.

Financial Times recalls Charlotte Brontë's words describing the 1851 Great Exhibition and Crystal Palace in particular:

“Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things,” wrote Charlotte Brontë. “Whatever human industry has created you find there ... It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth.” (Edwin Heathcote)

Michelle Kerns recommends Jane Slayre as a summer read in the Books Examiner:

Jane Slayre - Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin. I'm reading this book because I will consider my life sadly wasted if I make it to my deathbed without having had the chance to read these words in a Jane Eyre spoof: "Reader, I buried him."

Darragh McManus argues in The Guardian that Jane Eyre, among others, would improve by some rewriting:

To be fair, it's not just SF. Would it be heresy, for instance, to suggest that Jane Eyre might have been improved by judicious use of the red marker? I studied it in college, I appreciate it was profound and pioneering and seminal, but actually reading the thing, all eight thousand pages (or so it seemed at the time) … a turgid, laborious leviathan.

No, it's not heresy... just plain laziness.

Bella Online talks about literary conventions:

While some of the greatest classics such as "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Jane Eyre," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Gone with the Wind" feature these and other literary conventions, readers must confess at some point that they must often suspend belief that this is how life actually works. Do governesses really fall in love with the man who locks away a crazy wife in his attic? (Veronica Walker)

ABC (Spain) interviews A.S. Byatt who is presenting the Spanish translation of The Children's Book:

Los maltrechos héroes infantiles de Dickens, las Brontë, Henry James, torrentes de imaginación y fantasía se escurren por este millar de páginas en las que casi nada es lo que parece. (...)

-«Oliver Twist» y «Grandes esperanzas», de Dickens; «Alicia en el País de las Maravillas», de Carroll; «El señor de las moscas», de Golding; «Jane Eyre», de Charlotte Bronte...

-Todas me han influido mucho. Salvo «El señor de las moscas», las leí de niña. La infancia de los héroes de Dickens (David Copperfield, Pip, Oliver Twist) es aterradora, y el comienzo de «Grandes esperanzas» es uno de los principios más increíbles de la historia de la literatura. De pequeña, gracias a estos libros, y a «Jane Eyre», aprendí lo que son el terror y la injusticia, que esas cosas existen. (Manuel De La Fuente) (Google translation)

El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) traces a (literary) profile of Tomás Borge:

A tales lecturas se sumaron las Florecillas de San Francisco; Las almas muertas de Gogol; la de Alberto Masferrer, y sus referencias sobre Sandino; de Stendhal, Emile Bronte (sic), Corín Tellado, las aventuras de Bill Barnes, Doc Savage y Nick Carter. (Jorge Eduardo Arellano) (Google translation)

Clarín (Chile) interviews Mexican author Rose Mary Espinosa:

MC.- ¿Leíste la novela “Alta infidelidad” de Rosa Beltrán?, ¿revisaste la literatura de las dos Elenas: Garro y Poniatowska?, ¿qué referentes tenías de los celos enfermizos en la narrativa mexicana?
RE.- Lecturas como tales de literatura latinoamericana no fueron tan directas, o no estaba consiente de que me alimentaran porque lo que yo revisé fue literatura romántica y gótica, por ejemplo, Emily Brontë y Bram Stoker. (Mario Casasús) (Google translation)

The Svenska Dagbladet talks to New York Times book critic Liesl Schillinger:

Hennes egen favoritkaraktär finns i en pjäs; i Shakespeares Trettondagsafton, där en kvinna klär ut sig till man och upplever båda könen. Hon gillar Elizabeth Bennet och Jane Eyre också, men finner ofta de mest intressanta kvinnorna i biografier.(Jenny Nordberg) (Google translation)

Gazeta Turystyka (Poland) interviews local children's author Joanna Olech:

Do tego raju wspinaczy przybywają pasjonaci z całego świata, ja kibicowałam mężowi i kolegom. Z kolei przeczytawszy "Wilczy notes" i "Wołokę" Mariusza Wilka, bardzo chcę odwiedzić Wyspy Sołowieckie. A po lekturze "Na plebanii w Haworth" Anny Przedpełskiej-Trzeciakowskiej - "wichrowe wzgórza" i ślady sióstr Bronte (byłam w Yorkshire, ale do Haworth nie dotarłam). (Google translation)

E-reader and Jane Eyre links in the Pittsburgh Books Examiner; This Miss Loves to Read admires Jane Eyre and librosbooks posts about Jane Eyre 1944 in Spanish. Suite101 analyses Wide Sargasso Sea; some more Wuthering Heights Wednesday posts: Views from the Page and the Oven, Serendipity, Messy Karen, The Biblio Blogazine, New Century Reading; Cupcakes and Cherries has also read Emily Brontë's book and Les Brontës à Paris translates some contemporary Wuthering Heights criticism to French. She Reads Novels reviews Agnes Grey and Impressions in Ink posts about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëites, Fiction, Jane Eyre,Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights