"All that lay between Charlotte’s mind and my own was the mere matter of 150 years"

Meanjin Quarterly contains a very nice guest post by Alice Cannon about her work in the conservation laboratory at the Pierpont Morgan Library:

Every week I would phone my parents and say, ‘Guess what came into the lab!’. Sometimes it was a batch of Rembrandt etchings. Sometimes it was an original score by Mozart. And once it was a small group of letters written by Charlotte Brontë.
Of course I read them. My primary memory is that they all contained some reference to either illness or death. In one letter, written in brown ink on mourning stationery (black-edged), Charlotte wrote of the death of her brother Branwell, lamenting ‘the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and shining light’. It was one of the best things I ever worked on at the Morgan; perhaps one of the best things I’ve ever worked on. I couldn’t quite get over the fact that I was working on a letter that Charlotte Brontë had written with her own hands. She had selected the paper, dipped her pen in that brown ink; her hand had moved across the page in direct connection with her thoughts. Letters are such intimate things, even when the subject matter is unremarkable. All that lay between Charlotte’s mind and my own was the mere matter of 150 years. (...)
But letters written by Charlotte Brontë don’t come your way very often. They didn’t even require much work. Long recognised as valuable things, they had been cared for well and only had some splits along old fold lines to repair, easily done using a fine Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste.

We read in the Daily Mail about the financial backup of Wuthering Heights 2011:

Arts aficionado Lord Browne is ­taking a close interest in new British film Wuthering Heights. For I can reveal the multi-millionaire former BP chief has invested £500,000 in a fund run by Goldcrest Capital ­Holdings, which is bank-rolling the movie, starring unknown young actress Kaya Scodelario.
Experts say Browne, appointed by David Cameron to recruit business leaders to ­Government boards, could save up to £180,000 through his canny, tax-­efficient ­investment. ­Goldcrest Capital Holdings, an offshoot of the Goldcrest film ­company, whose hits include Chariots Of Fire, is worth £20million.
Browne made his investment, the largest allowed under the programme, this year. He was one of 27 investors in the first round of the scheme. A friend of the businessman points out that if the scheme collapses, he loses all his money.
A spokesman tells me: ‘Lord Browne regards his personal finances as private. This investment was encouraged and sanctioned by the UK tax authorities.’

The Times talks about high tea:

In her novel Shirley, Charlotte Brontë writes: “Yorkshire people, in those days, took their tea round the table; sitting well into it, with their knees duly introduced under the mahogany.”(Jane Wheatley)

Also in The Times, David Aaranovitch includes a piece of Jane Eyre 1944 trivia:

Let us start with the underwear. I know Orson Welles wore a girdle all though filming Jane Eyre, so it’s not as though men have never had help.

Eye Weekly interviews Gemma Arterton about her role in Tamara Drewe:

Did you fear that Tamara would end up seeming too brittle and unlikeable?
I deliberated as to whether I should do this part or not because I didn’t know if I could empathize with her. You don’t have to like the characters you play but you do have to try to understand them. I still don’t like her but you’re not meant to like her, even though she is the heroine. Her character is similar to Bathsheba [the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, on which Tamara Drewe is loosely based]. It’s the same thing with Cathy from Wuthering Heights. She’s another one who makes you think, “You’re such a spoiled brat but I want to watch you because you’re so dramatic and lost and I feel sorry for you.” I hope that’s why we watch Tamara. It was a struggle to find a balance between femme fatale and someone with more depth. (Jason Anderson)

Library Science Degree selects Heathcliff as one of the 50 most hated characters in literary history:

8. Heathcliff
Some fans of Wuthering Heights tend to interpret Heathcliff as a romantic figure, but a hefty portion of readers hate him for his abusive, manipulative and negligent behavior towards the people in his life.

EDIT: Thanks to Traxy for pointing out that as a matter of fact there were other Brontë characters on the list that we missed:

18.) Catherine Earnshaw
Like many other romantic heroines on this list, the fiery Catherine seems to be divided between lovers and haters with equally weighted passions. Those who can’t stand her see a character just as venomous and relentlessly cruel as her negligent lover Heathcliff.

23.) Edward Rochester
As one of the quintessential brooding men of Victorian literature, Edward Rochester enjoys his fair share of fans. However, modern audiences are turned off by his callous, dishonest treatment of the titular heroine. Though leaving Bertha in the attic and causing her to mentally deteriorate even faster makes for an even more appalling offense.

Mountain Xpress reviews I Walked With a Zombie (1943):

Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (1943) probably holds the place of honor as the most ludicrously titled great film ever made. It was a follow-up to Cat People (1942) and RKO Pictures wanted a suitably horrific title—even if what Tourneur and producer Val Lewton were giving them was essentially Jane Eyre in the Tropics (well, that with some voodoo trimmings, which I believe Charlotte Brontë neglected to incorporate into her novel). (Ken Hanke)

The Herald (Ireland) has an article about dating after a divorce.. with a Brontë mention:

Yes reader, I am to marry him. I know that's Brontë, not Austen, here's how:
When this piece is published a lot of people will find out I'm getting married. I have stayed very quiet about it -- I learned a lot from the first time around. (Suzanne Power)

Xomba suggests a Wuthering Heights meets Cannibal Holocaust plot:

Wuthering Heights Holocaust
Italian movie. Heathcliff’s sister has disappeared in the moors. He leads and expedition there and faces horrors beyond belief. Contains animal cruelty: a hedgehog is forced to watch Steven Seagal movies shot in Bulgaria.

Seattle Writings Career Examiner posts a nice personal story with Jane Eyre:

Then I read one of my favorite books of all time, Jane Eyre. What could be more perfect for a twelve-year old, all awkwardness and pudgy knees? Was I transported into tragic longing and beautiful brooding characters? Did I learn that reading can make you feel someone else's pain, at an age where self-centeredness is all? I wonder if that's why I read, then; to understand others. I don't remember, but I'm sure my skin problems were nothing compared to Jane's tortured life and love.
Jane Eyre took on a completely different meaning at fifteen. As a result of a car accident, I had a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma. What I recall of that time are pages of the books I had read flashing thorough my mind. They were more real to me than what was happening when I woke. For many weeks, I was in the hospital relearning everything from how to walk and talk to how to tie my shoes.(...) (Read more) (Jennifer Conner)

EDIT: An alert from Madrid, Spain.

Semana Gótica de Madrid, 2010
Casa de Vacas, Madrid
16:00 Mesa redonda “Eros y Thanatos en la literatura Gótica”:
Noelia Malla García(UCM): “Eros y Thanatos en Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë”

Killin'Time Reading reviews The House of Dead Maids; Fly High! reviews Bianca Pitzorno's La Bambinaia Francese; The Squeee reviews Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter; Meangelx (in Swedish) and a thousand dreams review Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Talks, Wuthering Heights