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  • Behind the Glass: A Parsonage Podcast
    With... Adam Sargant - It's our last episode of series 1!!! Expect ghost, ghouls and lots of laughs as we round off the series with Adam Sargant, AKA Haunted Haworth. We'll be...
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Monday, September 27, 2010

Remember Doreen?

Monday, September 27, 2010 2:48 pm by Cristina in , , , ,    3 comments
The Telegraph and Argus reviews Martin Wainwright's True North.
But the index is rubbish... you won’t find a single reference to the T&A, David Hockney and a lot else. Walt Whitman gets a mention, but not Michael Wharton, the Way Of The World columnist who invented Doreen Brontë, the fourth Brontë sister, and the redoubtable Alderman Foodbotham.
Yet references to both, and much else, abound in the book as the venerable Wainwright wends his way, like a cheerful monk, through the mental and physical landscape of the North, from coast to coast and from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Nottingham (he’s fond of Robin Hood). (Jim Greenhalf)
If you don't remember Doreen, the (made-up) missing Brontë sister, here's more info on her.

Another review with a Brontë mention comes from the Chicago Tribune on Paul Gordon's musical Daddy Long Legs (currently on stage at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts). The reviewer doesn't seem to be too fond of Gordon's previous collaboration with John Caird, Jane Eyre the Musical.
Gordon's sweet and honest music, which avoids the excess of "Jane Eyre" in favor of a musical vocabulary that seems to fit a lively, hopeful young woman who just needs a bit of help with her dreams. (Chris Jones)
Well, we don't find it excessive at all.

On the blogosphere, Wuthering Heights is reviewed by AdoroLivros (in Portuguese) and Mennta (in Spanish). La vie page à page writes about Jane Eyre (in French). And finally, The Elliott Review posts about April Lindner's Jane.

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3 comments:

  1. ksotikoula9/27/2010 07:45:00 pm

    Can I ask something about the weekly quote?
    (which I copy here because it will change and in the future, one can not understand what I am asking):
    ...we stayed to purchase the tea. Here Miss Matty’s absence of mind betrayed itself. If she was made aware that she had been drinking green tea at any time, she always thought it her duty to lie awake half through the night afterward (I have known her take it in ignorance many a time without such effects), and consequently green tea was prohibited the house; yet to-day she herself asked for the obnoxious article, under the impression that she was talking about the silk. However, the mistake was soon rectified.
    ~ Cranford (ch. XIII) by Elizabeth Gaskell (anecdote said to have been inspired by Charlotte Brontë)

    What do you mean when you say inspired by Charlotte Bronte? That Mrs Matty's behavior was inspired by Charlotte's who subjected subconsciously herself to insomnia or that CB simply described a similar instance about someone else to Mr Gaskell?

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  2. Richard Wilcocks9/27/2010 08:43:00 pm

    Jim Greenhalf is right: the index to Martin Wainwright's True North is in need of a little revision. The book is a very good read, though, and includes a few perceptive comments on the Brontës and Haworth. The author came to talk to us about it in Headingley last March. See: http://headingleylitfest.blogspot.com/2010/03/martin-we-loved-you.html

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  3. Cristina9/27/2010 09:52:00 pm

    Ksotikoula - Ellis Chadwick writes in her book In the Footsteps of the Brontës (1914) without citing any sources:

    It was during this visit [second visit to the Gaskells] that Charlotte Brontë objected to green tea ; she arrived at the Gaskells in the evening and, when asked if she would take tea or coffee, said she preferred tea so long as it did not contain a particle of green tea, which prevented her from sleeping. Mrs. Gaskell knew that her tea was a mixture of black and green, and as there was no means
    of obtaining a fresh supply she wisely said nothing. Charlotte Brontë partook of the tea, and when asked the next morning how she had slept, replied " Splendidly," which caused a smile to pass round the breakfast-table. This trifling incident was used by Mrs. Gaskell in Cranford, where Miss Matty objected to green tea.

    I don't know whether it's true but it's an anecdote I'm very fond of.

    Richard - the book does sound very interesting. And thanks for the link. It's too bad about the index. We said something similar when we reviewed Michael Baumber's History of Haworth early this year.

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