Astonishing Creativity

Nigel Farndale talks about book dedications on Publishers Weekly. Brontë's dedication of the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackerary is quoted:

Admiring but not knowing the dedicatee can be equally problematic. Charlotte Brontë dedicated Jane Eyre to William Thackeray. She must have been the only person in literary England who did not know that Thackeray (like the novel's antihero Mr. Rochester) was married to a woman who had gone insane. Or perhaps she was pretending not to know. Novelists can be quite contrary.

The latest play by Polly Teale, Speechless, is performed at the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh). The Guardian's reviewer finds echoes of a previous piece by Teale, Brontë:

In Brontë, Teale has already written eloquently about how isolation on the Yorkshire moors and a retreat into their own imaginations fostered the astonishing creativity of the Brontë sisters. In many ways, this is that play's companion piece, a story of how isolation and fantasy can corrode and destroy, too. (Lyn Gardner)

The Yorkshire Post interviews Mark Skipper, chief executive of Northern Ballet Theatre and Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire:

Name your favourite Yorkshire book/author/artist/CD/performer.
Wuthering Heights, only because of the connection with the company's very successful production, our first full-length ballet in our new era. It was set to a score by French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg, of Les Misérables fame, and he played I Dreamed a Dream on my piano at home.

CBS News uses Jane Eyre and The Illiad as examples of the whole Gutenberg project; Gypsyscarlett's Blog posts what is missing/altered in translations (in this case German) of Wuthering Heights; tankar om text reviews positively Agnes Grey in Swedish; Accounts of Wanderlust Wonderings has visited Haworth; ¡Cielos! Dónde está el dinero posts about another visit, to the National Portrait Gallery and the Brontë portrait (in Spanish); a 1880 Jane Eyre edition on Gutenberg; Life's Twists and Turns reviews The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë. And of course do not forget to check out the new look of Les Brontë à Paris.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Fiction, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Referencess, Websites, Wuthering Heights