Servants at Thornfield Hall

The Ripley & Heanor News has an article on local students taking part in Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre:

STUDENTS from the Ripley Academy of Dance and Drama are set to star on the big screen in the latest remake of Jane Eyre.
Filming has just finished on the adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's famous novel with pupils from the Diane Fleming run school taking roles as scullery maids, carriage and stable boys and a gardener's assistant.
Miss Fleming, principal of the academy, said: "They had a great time dressed in the 1800s style costumes, including bonnets. The girls very much enjoyed having the hairstyles of the period.
"Our students have been very privileged to be part of such a high profile production and cannot wait to see it in the cinema."Filming took place all around the country including Haddon Hall and Chatsworth House. (Picture)

Daily Kos commemorates - a little belatedly - Anne Brontë's death and vindicates her as a 'pioneer and pathfinder'.

This week in 1849, Anne Brontë passed away at the young age of 29. She was an English writer and poet. Her most famous novel was The Tenant of Wildfell Hall published in 1848 and sold out in 6 weeks. The novel was controversial because of the way it portrayed alcoholism and domestic abuse. The novel showed women speaking frankly to men, and slamming doors in their face in response to abuse. This lead some to say the book was "unfit in the hands of girls" while others considered it to be the best novel they had ever read. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is sometimes considered the first feminist novel ever written. In December 1848, she became tragically ill with influenza and she ultimately died in February 1849.

What's a shame about the notice is that it is so inaccurate - and incoherent - with facts. They are commemorating 'this week' something that actually took place last week but then they also finish by saying that she 'ultimately died in February 1849'. And of course she died of tuberculosis, not influenza.

Actor Brian Blessed picks Wuthering Heights as one of his six favourite books in the Daily Express.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë [...]
I often feel this is unfairly mocked by modern-day critics. But I was brought up not far away and I don’t just love Haworth in Yorkshire I also think it’s a terrific novel that stands the test of time. So ignore the critics and immerse yourself in a classic English novel.

This Irish Times also mentions Wuthering Heights in connection to Joe O'Connor's novel Ghost Light.

My walk home would take me past the old Victorian house where the great writer John Synge and his widowed mother had endured their last years, a house that appears several times in Ghost Light. As a child, I passed it often, was faintly afraid of it, often wondered about the stories it had seen. On a wintry night it could be forbidding as the Bates Motel, or as Wuthering Heights in a rainstorm. But on a moonlit summer evening in that coast-town of seagulls and steeples, a strange beauty seemed to glitter from its windows. (Rosita Boland)

The Sacramento Bee reports that Sacramento Public Library director Rivkah Sass's favourite book is Jane Eyre and the Calgary Herald features the story of a woman who, whilst unemployed, read Jane Eyre.

As for blogs, Letters with Character writes a letter to Cathy and Wuthering Heights is reviewed by Valchiria (in Italian) and À l'ombre du cerisier (in French). El Trujamán posts in Spanish about 'Charlotte Brontë and love in French'.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights