We hear today via The Telegraph & Argus of the sad fire (14 August) and demolition (17 August) of one of Haworth's last mills, Ebor Mill, which now housed not a worsted company as it did when it was first built in/around 1819 but a spring factory, Airedale Springs. In 1849, the mill was bought by the well-known Haworth family, the Merralls, who were prominent in the village and had many connections with the Brontës at differente points in their lives. Most famously, Branwell Brontë was friends with Hartley and/or Michael Merrall (sources differ; he probably knew both of them anyway). Branwell was dead by the time Michael Merrall took responsibility of Ebor in 1849 and the mill was in the Merrall family's hands until 1965 when it passed onto the current hands.Ebor Mill is only the latest mill to have been devoured by the flames in recent years, which is a shame, apart from the loss to its current owner and workers, because it was part of the landscape the Brontës knew well and part of Haworth's history. The Haworth the Brontës lived in would have been dominated by the mills, both in the landscape and the lives of its inhabitants.
Picture: Ebor Mill, Haworth (Tim Green)
Not the first time that Anne Rice is asked about Twilight and she compares its structure to Jane Eyre. Now in an interview on Christianity Today:
Did you read the Twilight novels?Smoky Mountain News reviews Moonshiner's Daughter by Mary Judith Messer. The article begins like this:
No. I did see the movies, mainly because people were asking me. I thought they were entertaining and they were for young people. The movies were fairly superficial, very touchingly naïve, traditionally romantic, and they had to do with a young woman with mysterious figures in her life—like Jane Eyre. I do love the series True Blood. I don't always like the way they handle things, but they have a great sense of humor. (Sarah Pulliam Bailey)
Sometimes they use the picks and shovels of fiction; Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Thomas Wolfe come most famously to mind as writers who frequently turned to the terrors and triumphs of their adolescence and early life to make their books.A sophomore who reads Wuthering Heights (But [his] summer isn't all fun...) in Agoura Hills Patch; Angieville posts an enthusiastic review of April Lindner's Jane; awsumgal is recreating the Rochester (and eventually Jane) from Jane Eyre 1983 in a doll (seriously); Little Ladybug posts about Jane Eyre 2006 and Judging a Book by its Cover posts about the original novel; Sacramento Book Review reviews The Brontës Went to Woolworths; nuvezita talks about Wuthering Heights and adaptations on YouTube.
Categories: Books, Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Sequels, Wuthering Heights
I think she should have that as the "before" Rochester doll, and then do an "after" version, minus hand and eye.
ReplyDeleteThat is sad about the mill. I was near Brontë country on Saturday, in Saddleworth, which used to be in the West Riding but is now in Greater Manchester. The moors were purple and there were factories all over the place. In Stalybridge, everywhere you look pretty much there's a Victorian factory chimney hoving into view. Even though the Haworth mills are dwindling, there's quite a few left elswhere in the Pennines. One I went past made me think of Shirley! (unsurprisingly perhaps...).