Emily with hangover

Chortle reviews the Grainne Maguire's show We Need to Talk about Bonnets ... quite explicitly:

Considering I began this show in a state of relative ignorance – I’ve read Jane Eyre but my knowledge of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and the Brontës is decidedly sketchy – you would have been hard pushed to convince me how much I’d ultimately enjoy this solo debut from Grainne Maguire. (...)
While the former primary school teacher still indulges herself playfully, playing a hungover Emily Brontë regretting a (relatively) lusty letter sent to the vicar, or trying stand-up as Lydia Bennett, her material on gender difference reflecting the massive sexual inequality of the time, there’s an occasional edge to her delivery now. Less a fond ‘reader, I married him’, more a blunt ‘he fucked me’. (Jay Richardson)

The Yorkshire Post talks about the future of Yorkshire-based films after the closing of the UK Film Council:

As the head of production at SY, [Hugo] Heppell has been a key player in making movies happen in the region. With filming recently finished on the television sequel of This is England and filming about to start on Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Heppell says commitments made to films about to happen will be fulfilled, but the future is less clear. (Nick Ahad)

In the Nashville Single Women Examiner the Brontë sisters are listed among other famous single women... forgetting that Charlotte Brontë eventually married Arthur Bell Nichols.

A student who has read Jane Eyre on Reading Eagle; Tales from the Writing Front includes Jane Eyre among her favourite heroines; A Vontade de Regresso posts about the author of that novel, Charlotte Brontë (in Portuguese); Fractured Fiction and Southern Disposition read (and were not particularly impressed by) Wuthering Heights; Un pouco de mim (in Portuguese) is more positive about Emily Brontë's novel.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

Jane Eyre 3.5-5.0

A new Jane Eyre adaptation for young readers (more precisely a new edition):

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë

* Pub. Date: September 2010
* Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing
* Series: Timeless Classics Series, #
* ISBN-13: 9781616510824
* ISBN: 161651082X
READING LEVEL: 3.5 TO 5.0
INTEREST LEVEL: YA
GUIDED READING LEVEL: Z

Timeless Classics- designed for the struggling reader and adapted to retain the integrity of the original work. Beginning with an exciting new look, these classic novels will grab a student's attention from the very first page. The new editions now include eight pages of activities to enhance the reading experience bringing each softcover classic to 88 pages.

And its correspondent study guide:

Timeless Classics: Jane Eyre Study Guide

• ISBN-13: 9781616511395
• ISBN: 1616511397

CD-ROM format; Thirty-five reproducible exercises in each 48-page guide reinforce basic reading and comprehension skills as they teach higher order critical thinking skills and literacy appreciation. Guides also include teaching suggestions, background notes, act-by-act summaries, and answer keys.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre

Wishing to be Different

An extract from Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman can be read in the Yorkshire Post:

Extract from Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman. Great Northern Books, ISBN 9781905080700. To order a signed copy, visit www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk or call 01274 735056. Yorkshire Post readers save £2 on Brontë in Love, price £12.99 (RRP 14.99).
To order your copy or treat a friend, ring our order line 01748 821122, Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post, please send cheque/postal order for £12.99 plus £2.75 p&p made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd. Send to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond DL10 4QP.

Charlotte Brontë wanted desperately to believe that brains were more important than beauty. Yet whenever she looked in the mirror or caught a glimpse of herself in one of the windows of her home, in Haworth parsonage, she couldn't help but feel disappointed.
She was short. Her lips were too small. Her head was far too big for her thin body. As for her hair, when curled, it looked dry and frizzy; when left to its own devices, it sat limply round her bony shoulders.
Charlotte was her own harshest critic. Her heart beat more passionately than anyone she had ever known, but she felt trapped within the plainest of exteriors. Blind to her simple, understated beauty, she spent much of her life wishing to be different.
For Charlotte, her appearance was a constant reminder of the unfairness of real life, and from the earliest age it forced a retreat into imaginary worlds where the heart always ruled the head and where those who loved passionately almost always triumphed. (Read more)

gather talks about this video by Epipheo which parodies the Twilight saga:

[I]t all comes down to a simple, but brilliant 3 step formula. One that has worked for centuries in literature and transitioned seamlessly into decades of cinema.
It goes something like this:
1. The female lead character is basically an empty shell.
2. The male lead represents everything women want in a man - multiplied by 10,000.
3. No one thinks it's strange that the two are completely devoted to each other.
Thinking about it, the theory makes perfect sense. Ever heard of Wuthering Heights? Titanic? (Tom Rose)

Sorry, but if the theory cannot be applied to a novel is to Wuthering Heights. Number One doesn't apply (Catherine an empty shell? It's not easy to identify with such a character); Number Two neither (Heathcliff a male-role model? Come on...) and Number Three again doesn't work (Cathy and Heathcliff's devotion is very misunderstood and everybody thinks is quite bizarre).

Esther Lombardi on About.com shares her love for Jane Eyre:

When I was a girl, I spent many hours buried in a book. I devoured them all--and would have rather spent time curled up with a volume than participated in most other activities... Perhaps that's why I enjoyed Jane Eyre so much. I was never an orphan, but her early experience could have mirrored that of the "everygirl" bookworm--reading, imagining and dreaming of a future I could never quite foretell.

The Dewsbury Reporter mentions briefly the exhibition The Life and Times of Patrick Brontë in Dewsbury at the Dewsbury Museum; a student who read Jane Eyre as summer reading describes the novel concisely in M-A Bear News:

Jane Eyre, which is about a woman who falls in love with an older man who keeps his insane wife chained up in the attic, and is later reduced to caring for him when a fire leaves him blind and mutilated. (Samuel Sexton)

Write Life, LLC interviews author Patricia Orvis:

Favorite Book: Wuthering Heights. I had to read it in high school, which was daunting at first, because I had to give a speech about it, so I needed to read it well. Yet, it ended up being so lovely and tragic a story that I couldn’t forget it. I read it about once a year now!

The Reader Online posts about Emily Brontë's poem A Little While and Les Brontë à Paris posts a French translation by Pierre Leyris of There Should Be No Despair For You; Fabien Legacy posts several Brontë country pictures; Law and Conversation recommends Jane Eyre; Book-n-Roll has seen Wuthering Heights 2009; Könyv, egó, entrópia reviews Wide Sargasso Sea.

Categories: Brontëites, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Poetry, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

Listen to Poems by the Brontë Sisters

The Radio Theatre Goup released yesterday, August 29, a series of readings of poems by the Brontë sisters:

On Sunday 29th August, Radio Theatre Group will release a new series of recordings entitled Brontë - a selection of poems by the Brontë sisters. These poems wil be performed by Frankie MacEachen, Ann Langridge and Giga Gray.

Frankie MacEachen reads the poems of Emily Brontë, including

Remembrance
...No Coward Soul is Mine
The Old Stoic
High Waving Heather
Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning
Anticipation

Ann Langridge reads the poems of Anne Brontë

Appeal
Lines Composed in a Windy Day
The Captive Dove
Reminiscence
A Fragment

Giga Gray reads the poems of Charlotte Brontë

Regret
Presentiment
On The Death of Anne Brontë
Parting
Passion
Winter Stores

The complete set can be downloaded here.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Poetry

Too Good to be True

Sarah Freeman author of the upcoming/already published book Brontë in Love writes about Charlotte Brontë in the Sunday Express (which illustrates the text with a 'portrait' of Charlotte Brontë that we have not traced yet... can any reader enlighten us? (see below)):

SOME stories are just too good to be true. Take Charlotte, the plain, stoic cleric’s daughter, who wrote one of British literature’s greatest love stories before her own heart had even been touched by the tiniest of flutters.
The myth of the quiet genius came from Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s friend and fellow novelist, who wrote the first biography of the author shortly after her death.
It was a book written with the very best of intentions but one which had no interest in salacious detail. Charlotte was an extraordinary literary talent and a woman whose vivid imagination and sheer determination allowed her to defy Victorian convention.
However, she was also arguably a wild fantasist who lived a dangerous double life, obsessively intent on destroying the marriage of the man she fell in lust with and a hopeless romantic who was taken to the very edge of a nervous breakdown.
Those seeds of destruction were sown during her childhood in Haworth parsonage. Charlotte desperately wanted to believe that brains were more important than beauty yet whenever she looked in the mirror she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. (...) (Read More)

EDIT: Our thanks to the knowledgeable Susan of TheBrontës.net, who was able to solve the mystery as much as possible. The image which accompanies the article above is not of Charlotte but, according to William Scruton and his book Thornton and the Brontës (1898), it is a portrait of Emily and confirmed by Martha Brown. The matter of the picture is, of course, much more intriguing now. Here's the quote from the book:

»Miss Nannie Preston, of Littlebeck Hall, near Bingley, has already gained so high a reputation for her artistic excellence that any praise from me seems quite superfluous. ...
The portrait of Emily Brontë (see frontispiece) was carefully and accurately copied by Miss Preston from a picture which came to me from Haworth with good credentials as to authenticity. The original was submitted to the inspection of Martha Brown, the Brontë housekeeper, and admitted by her to be a tolerably faithful portrait. The picture formerly belonged to a member of the Brown family, of Haworth, who always regarded it as a good likeness. On the strength of this evidence, and notwithstanding Mr. Shorter's opinion that the quest for an authentic portrait of Emily Bronte now seems hopeless, I have felt justified in giving the portrait a prominent place in my book.
Readers of Miss Robinson's Emily Brontë will doubtless remember that lady's word-picture of the authoress of Wuthering Heights,—" A quantity of dark-brown hair, deep, beautiful hazel eyes that could flash with passion, features somewhat strong and stern, the mouth prominent and resolute." Martha Brown, who was thrown much in contact with Emily, said, "We always thought her to be the best looking, the cleverest, and the bravestspirited of the three sisters."« (xiv)

A.A. Gill in The Sunday Times has also something to say about the Eyre-China love affair:

A great leap backwards.
The Chinese can’t get enough of Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It’s translated as “a record of an orphan girl who drifts about alone”, which I think is a better title. While being deeply conservative about imported culture, the Chinese have agreed to buy a job lot of our ghastly Sunday-night BBC costume dramas, presumably because these stories of petty snobbery, greed, arranged marriages, women as property and the rigid class system are cautionary tales about life in the running dog West.

lee_fragilidad posts some pictures of Jane Eyre 1973, Jane Eyre 1983 and Wuthering Heights 2009; YayFunBooks , From Films to Frocks, Um Mondo de Sonhos (in Portuguese) post about Jane Eyre; ScribbleManiac nicely describes a typical case of Emily Brontë-philia which culminates with a trip to Brontë country; the Brontë sisters posts about Sir Emery Walker, the photographer who took the 1854 alleged photograph of Charlotte Brontë; Blog do Livro reviews Wuthering Heights in Portuguese. Finally, Les Brontë à Paris reviews the 1988 fictionalised biography of Emily Brontë La Hurlevent by Jeanne Champion (in French).

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

More Wuthering

New Wuthering Heights editions:

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

• Pub. Date: July 2010
• Publisher: WingSpan Publishing

• ISBN-13: 9781595948410
• ISBN: 1595948414

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

• Pub. Date: July 2010
• Publisher: IndoEuropeanPublishing

• ISBN-13: 9781604442915
• ISBN: 1604442913

Categories: Books, Wuthering_Heights

Chinese Industrial Revolution and the Brontës

Giles Coren in The Times has an explanation for the current success of Jane Eyre in China:

China loves Jane Eyre? Reader, I understand it.
(...) By far the majority, however, if Thursday’s Times is to be believed, will be worrying most of all that if it goes on much longer they will not be home in time for the latest instalment of of Jane Eyre, and thus may never find out who is making the racket in the attic up at Thornfield Hall. “Surely,” they will say to themselves, as they tear off and chew another scrap of floor carpet for sustenance, “It cannot be that Mr Rochester has a crazy first wife who has been locked up there for years without it having been previously hinted at? No, that would be mental. It’s only the dehydration that’s making me think like that.”
For the Chinese have gone crazy for the 19th-century English novel. Or, rather for BBC adaptations thereof. “Chinese fall in love with Jane Eyre — the egalitarian heroine”, this paper reported, and went on to announce that a digital broadcaster in China has snapped up BBC films not only of Charlotte Brontë’s post-Gothic romp but also of novels by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and William Makepeace Endellion Thackeray. It is the first sale of BBC digital content to the world’s newly crowned second-biggest economy and, along with the huge success of a stage version of Jane Eyre in Beijing last year, points to a surprising fascination with 19th-century English literature in a land where you would not have thought it had much to say. But clearly Chinese audiences see something that they can identify with. Can it really be, as The Times report suggested, that Jane Eyre’s assertion of the heroine’s “equality” with Mr Rochester strikes an ideological chord in the land of Mao? That it is seen as a tacit endorsement of the principles of communism? Of course not. It is because English writers of the 19th century were responding to socioeconomic conditions that, while long forgotten here, are absolutely in place over there. The Chinese are taking the literature of of our industrial revolution and “reading” it during uring theirs. It’s a fantastic piece of cultural recycling.(...)
But a Marxist critique of the rise of the novel (which is presumably the kind the Chinese Government approves of, moribund though it is in universities here) would see her work, and the Brontës’, very much as a response to the emergence of a modern capitalist economy whose material freedoms helped to generate a bourgeois notion of self that led directly to the rise of the “psychological” novel. (...) It’s no wonder Jane Eyre is suddenly so popular, with its tale of an abandoned girl child who survives her deprivations to come good in the end. China, with its mushrooming power stations, its dark satanic mills, its rapid deruralisation, its burgeoning foreign interests, is just exactly where Britain was at our time of greatest literary fecundity. (Giles Coren)

Erica Wagner in The Times is not particularly fortunate when she says:

Now, perhaps you imagine that I have a photographic memory of every book I’ve ever read. You imagine that I could be my very own parlour game: go on, shout “T. S. Eliot” at her and she’ll launch into The Wasteland, “Charlotte Brontë” and she’ll give you Wuthering Heights till she’s blue in the face. Not to put too fine a point on it: No.

As we know that Erica Wagner knows her Brontës we will attribute the blunder to the mysteries of Internet publishing.

In the Miami Herald there's a nice story of the last first day of high school as seen by a mother:

This year a part of my life is ending. The part that has signed endless school forms and replied, on occasion, to admonishing teachers' notes. The part that has dutifully attended open houses, science fairs and high school football games. The part that has nagged, harangued and threatened. The part that has declared, ``If you want to spend your life behind the counter at McDonald's, then go ahead. Don't read Jane Eyre.'' (Ana Veciana-Suárez)

BBC News talks about the last episode of the world's longest-running sitcom The Last of the Summer Wine and particularly about the Last of the Summer Wine tour bus. It seems that in spite of the cancellation of the show, tourism in Holmfirth is still far from dying:

Tour guide Colin Frost says visitor numbers this summer are up, and - despite the fact the cameras have stopped rolling - he predicts TV repeats and DVDs will win over new generations.
"Ask yourself - how long have the Brontës been dead? And how busy is Haworth?" he grins. "There's still interest from all over the world. It'll never die." (James Alexander)

The Iran Book News Agency quotes author and translator Reza Najafi:

At Session "An Analysis of the History of English Literature" of the "Literary History of Nations" held Tuesday evening with presence of Amir Ali Nojumian at the House of the Literati, Reza Najafi said (...) "Among prominent figures of this period one can mention Thomas Hardy – with his Naturaist work 'Jude the Obscure', Robert Louis Stevenson – with his 'Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde' [sic], Brontë sisters – particularly Emily Brontë writer of 'Wuthering Heights' – and Jane Austin [sic] with the well-known 'Pride and Prejudice'."

Pakistan Daily News reviews Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert:

The writer, on the other hand, duels with her deep seated insecurities and reveals the sort of marriage she is likely to have — “wifeless, motherless and husbandless” — which simply means that neither would be obligated to fulfil the traditional role of housekeeper or breadwinner. It also means that she will proudly defend the decision to join an “Auntie Brigade” instead of enlisting in the “Mommy Corps”. Members of the exclusive brigade will be pleased to learn that they are in great company — Tolstoy, Capote, Lennon and the Brontë sisters, all raised by doting aunts.

Pat Benatar is interviewed in Boston Globe and she is quite clear about singing her cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights... now:

We have "the holy 14" that we have to play all the time. And then we have to plug in other ones. Spyder and I have worked on a lot of different things. We have a bunch of medleys this year. But I do have to tell you, when you make 13 records and you spread out the big anthems? Easy. When you string them together at 57? I want to cry. (Laughs). I sing "All Fired Up," "Shadows of Night," "Invincible," "Let's Stay Together," and "We Belong" in one big chunk. I don't have to work out ever. It's such gymnastics, it's insane. Every night someone yells out "Wuthering Heights" and I tell them "you sing it." (Sarah Rodman)

El Periódico del Mediterráneo (Spain) talks about Jane Eyre among other literary characters:

Editada por primera vez en 1847, en Londres, la novela Jane Eyre de Charlotte Bronté [sic], cuenta la historia de una joven que debe luchar para sobrevivir y realizarse sin ayuda del dinero, la familia o el privilegio de clase. La huérfana Jane está atrapada entre dos impulsos contradictorios. Por un lado es estoica, modesta y abnegada. Por el otro, es una persona apasionada, independiente, disconforme y rebelde frente a la injusticia que se encuentra en todas partes. El camino hacia el verdadero amor con el señor Rochester constituye un argumento romántico que permite seguir hablando en favor de las mujeres inteligentes y con aspiraciones en el contexto patriarcal de la Gran Bretaña victoriana. (Bellés) (Microsoft translation)

Boosh News includes Emily Brontë on their list of famous Leos; a Kindle winner with Brontë interests in a SmartPlanet contest; normblog interviews Rachel Carter, webmaster of Creative Writing:

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Ah - or Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Another Haworth picture in Saltaire Daily Photo and a story by Antonia Arslan published in L'Avvenire (Italy) with a Brontë mention.

Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Haworth, Music, References, Wuthering Heights

Jolien Janzing's Brontës in Brussels novel

A few days ago we came across an article in De Standaard (Belgium) about how the author Jolien Janzing has travelled to Haworth doing research for a novel project about the Brontës' stay in Brussels (no title yet). We contacted the author and she told us that,

I know Brussels very well (I live nearby) and I hope to to describe the city in that time (the history, everyday life, politics) and how it influenced them.
The Flemish and Dutch Fund for Literature (Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren) has given me a scholarship for my novel on the Brontës.

Her Brontëiteness is beyond doubt as some time ago she published an article about Jane Eyre in Feeling Magazine which thanks to the unvaluable help of Karin (from Brontës.nl) we can summarise as follows:

Janzing identifies herself with Jane Eyre, because she was a bit of an outcast as a child (being Dutch but growing up in Belgium). She recognizes in herself the belief in true love that Jane Eyre had. And she talks about how Charlotte Brontë inspired her to become a writer herself.

Categories: Books, Brussels, Fiction

Jane & Heathcliff, fan favourites

PrideSource reviews Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue:

A chronological listing of book titles is useful for readers who want to graze the centuries of prose that Donoghue has uncovered, writing that ranges from the heights of Shakespeare and Jane Eyre to some truly horrific potboilers. (Richard Labonte)

In the Delaware County Daily Times an article about Janes:

'Jane Eyre' a famous novel written in 1847 by Charlotte Brontë an English writer and poet. One of the themes, in a male-dominated society the character attempts to assert her personality. In 1847 hmmm, have things changed that much? (Mary Ann Fiebert)

Book Southern Africa has a curious theory of how books enter the 'classic canon':

You wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that the literary canon is made up of fan favourites that gradually got adopted by the literary establishment. From Shakespeare, to Austen, to the Brontës, to Dickens, and many points in between, we see smash-hit plays and novels being retrospectively gathered into the bosom of the establishment and granted a recognition they lacked in their own time. (Fiona Snyckers)

The Citizen reviews BBC4's In Their Own Words: British Novelists (Episode 1: Among the Ruins 1919-1939) and quotes Jean Rhys saying:

The Wide Sargasso Sea author Jean Rhys said she only wrote when unhappy: “When I was excited about life, I didn’t want to write about life at all, and when I was happy I had no wish to write.
“I have never wanted to write about being happy. You cannot describe it.”

The Doings Western-Springs asks for the book you wish you had written:

Jean Diedrich, attorney, Hinsdale: "Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë."

Conservative Home's Parliament Page interviews Margot James MP:

What is your favourite book? Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

April Lindner's Jane gets a not very good review in Chasing Ray; A Year of Thanks likes 'far better' Jane Eyre than Wuthering Heights; Threads of Red Blog selects some passages from Charlotte Brontë's novel; Saltaire Daily Photo visits the Brontë Parsonage; awsumgal posts her work-in-progress Rochester (1983 version) doll; We Other Victorians posts about Jean Rhys's other Bertha Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea; Les Brontë à Paris writes a brief biographical note of Elizabeth Gaskell (in French) and Katie-Isms acutely reviews Wuthering Heights:

No matter what you've heard, this is not a love story. It's a story about a passion, an obsession, and the depressing, often terrifying effects it has on the people involved. The love, if it is love, between Catherine and Heathcliff is very intense and very serious, but it certainly didn't make anyone happy.

Finally, Flickr user perseverando has uploaded a picture of Wycoller Hall.

Categories: Books, Elizabeth Gaskell, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

TB vs Hyperemesis Gravidarum

Medical literature is not alien to the Brontës. The death of Charlotte Brontë has always been a subject of periodical interest.

Hyperemesis Gravidarum is still today the most accepted reason for Charlotte Brontë's death but other explanations have been proposed. A good summary (and bibliography) of the reasons which endorse such diagnostic can be found in Whom the Gods Love Die Young: A Modern Medical Perspective on Illnesses that Caused the Early Death of Famous People by Roy Macbeth Pitkin M.D (Chapter 3: Charlotte Brontë and Excessive Vomit in Pregnancy)
Some years ago, Dr. G. Weiss suggested that TB and secondary Addison's disease was a better explanation (and eventually denied the possiblity that Charlotte was pregnant at the time) in Obstetrics & Gynecology 1991 Oct; 78(4):705-8 and Lyndall Gordon, in her biography of Charlotte Brontë, suggested that Tabby Ackroyd (the Brontës' servant) may have caught typhoid from Haworth's apallingly unsanitary conditions and passed it to Charlotte. More recently, Eugene V. Boisaubin M.D. and Dr. Mary Winkler in the unpublished paper "An Analysis of the Death of Charlotte Brontë," (Baylor College of Medicine History of Medicine Society, Houston, Texas, 1995) argued that hyperemesis gravidarum was the most possible scenario.

Now a new book seems to categorise again Charlotte's death agent as simply TB or at least that is what is suggested by a review published in the EID Journal Home, Volume 16, Number 9–September 2010:

As the drama unfolds, Dyer describes how TB ravaged Europe’s working class during the industrial revolution. More personal accounts from the Romantic Age are especially interesting. She tells us how 6 siblings of the famed literary Brontë family died of TB. (Rachel Albalak)

Tuberculosis (Biographies of Disease)
Carol A. Dyer
Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2010
ISBN-10: 031337211X
ISBN-13: 978-0313372117
Pages: 146; Price: US $45.00

Tuberculosis is a complicated medical condition that has a rich and important history, a distinctive social context, and an active and destructive present. The disease appears in Greek literature as early as 460 BCE and was a favorite of 19th-century novelists whose heroines often succumbed to “consumption.” Through history, the development of TB diagnosis and treatment has been synonymous with events in the development of medicine.

Tuberculosis presents TB from the perspective of the people and events that shaped its past and the factors that influence its current global state. The book begins with an essay discussing the importance of the social factors that influence the transmission and progression of TB. The following eight chapters focus on disease-specific information, historical and biographical perspectives, influence on the arts, the current state of TB in the world, and future directions. Throughout, medical information about the disease is intertwined with a historical and cultural perspective to illustrate the state of the disease today.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Scholar

A Chinese Wedding for Charlotte

A couple of upcoming Yorkshire festivals include Brontë-related events in their programmes. We read in the Halifax Evening Courier about 'Treasures Revealed' at St. James's Church in Hebden Bridge:

It was with interest that I read 'Your Say', August 10th: 'Charlotte Brontë came to Halifax for Wedding Dress' [regrettably this article is not online, as far as we know]. The article was handed to me by a friend some days later.
The marriage ceremony was indeed conducted by the Rev Sutcliffe Sowden, incumbent of St James's Church, Hebden Bridge from 1841-1861, until his untimely death by drowning in the nearby canal.
The choice of vicar for this important occasion was not accidental, as Sutcliffe Sowden and the Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls were intimate friends. Indeed, after Sutcliffe's death, the Rev Nicholls remarked in a letter of condolence to George Sowden, Sutcliffe's brother, that he had regarded him more as a relative than a friend.
In later years, Sutcliffe Sowden officiated at Charlotte's funeral, and the Rev Nicholls at the service and burial of his dear friend Sutcliffe, whose grave and head-stone occupy a prominent place in our churchyard at St James's.
These Brontë links will form an important part of our forthcoming festival 'Treasures Revealed', which takes place at St James's Church, Hebden Bridge, from the 11th to the 19th of September. Indeed, the festival begins on Saturday 11th with a showing of the film Jane Eyre within the church building. We invite you to join us for the film at 7.30pm, after which, supper will be served. (Anna Lomas)

The other one is the South Pennines Walk and Ride Festival which according to Grough:

It’s the landscape that inspired the Brontë sisters and the late poet laureate Ted Hughes and, though not as well known as the national parks that sandwich it, it offers landscapes and villages steeped in history. (...)
The fourth South Pennines Walk and Ride Festival opens on 11 September with walks on Ilkley Moor, cultural heart of the West Riding and setting for the unofficial Yorkshire anthem On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘At. (Liz Roberts)

A Brontë Connection Walk is going to be celebrated next September 18th.

The Times has an interesting article about China's weakness for Jane Eyre and the Brontës:

When Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, her gothic Victorian tale of love and insanity in rural England, it is reasonable to assume that she was not tailoring her prose for readers in 21st-century China. But the Middle Kingdom has become so keen on the story of the archetypal madwoman in the attic that a Chinese broadcaster has bought the digital rights to to the BBC’s adaptation of the book.
Sohu.com, an internet broadcaster, has acquired Jane Eyre along with four adaptations of novels by Jane Austen, four by Charles Dickens and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The deal, which is the BBC’s first sale of digital content in China, is the latest Chinese flirtation with Brontë after a stage adaptation of Jane Eyre in Beijing last year. The popularity of Brontë’s love story also prompted the winner of China’s equivalent of The X Factor to name herself “Jane Z” after the Victorian heroine. A spokeswoman for BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, was at a loss to explain the popularity of period dramas in China, but said that the bestselling BBC DVD in the country is Pride & Prejudice.
Some Chinese have identified with Jane Eyre because of her egalitarian principles, in particular her wish to be treated as an equal by Mr Rochester despite her lowly status as an orphan. Yuan Quan, who portrayed Jane Eyre on stage at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, said that the title character captured the experience of all girls who were born into poverty. “In my personal opinion, what Jane affirms is her position in society, even though she aspires for equality, she is also realistic,” she said. “It’s a conflict we all encounter, especially in today’s society. How other people view her doesn’t matter. If Rochester loves her, he must treat her as an equal.” Chinese enthusiasm for the Brontë sisters ates back to the 1930, when Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was first translated as Xia Lu Yuan Jia. Brontë’s novel Villette appeared in China in 1932 (as Luoxue Xiaojie Youxueji) and Jane Eyre followed three years later (as Guni Piaolingji, which translates as A Record of of an Orphan Girl who Drifts About Alone).

STV (with video) interviews the comic duo Frisky and Mannish and comments on their parody of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:

“For example Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, which is a big song in the UK, is also massive in Australia, which we didn’t know, and though the Australians didn’t understand who Kate Nash was, they understood what we were trying to do with the song and loved it."

The Advocate takes a different approach criticising the Twilight series:

Of course the books are well written, not to mention cleverly paced, but with all the comparisons to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, there is a sinister theme throughout: the hopelessness of women and the all-saving power of men. (Catherine Gale)

Vue reviews Vampires Suck, the Friedberg & Seltzer parody of the vampires-are-cool phenomenon:

Drac knows there's plenty of pints in the teen vampire-horrormone Twilight Saga to mock: formulaic shots, cheesy F/X, the bizarre effort to merge Bram Stoker and Wuthering Heights in 21st century America, the Mormon sucktext, the series' anti-feminism. But since this is a goof-spoof from the Friedberg and Seltzer factory (Scary Movie, Epic Movie, etc.), the movie tosses off some blunt-force one-liners, coasts on character impersonation, riffs off the originals' plot points, and pretends its cheap imitation of the Saga's mopey, slow scenes are parody. In other words, Vampires Suck bites. (Brian Gibson)

We read this funny thought in the Worthington Community Newspaper:

From Brontë sisters to Musketeers, in the literary world, good things come in threes. (Hillary Kline)

Saltaire Daily Photo now visits the Brontë Falls; w/e is on my mind, haha is reading Jane Eyre; Dreaming of Books awaits the release of April Lindner's Jane.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

Parrysland

The upcoming solo debut album by singer-songwriter Ashley Hicklin has a title inspired by Emily Brontë: Parrysland.

Several websites explain the connection. From Leeds Musical Scene:

'Parrysland' is the title of his debut as an artist in his own right, a concept album based upon a series of turbulent relationships - "They always start like fairytales, and then everything just slowly descends into chaos!" The record's title is taken from the writings of Emily Brontë, whose novel Wuthering Heights features a similarly turbulent relationship and is set on the Yorkshire Moors where Ashley grew up.

See also Lepiziger Zeitung for more details.

Parrysland was one of the fictional kingdoms of the Glass Town Confederacy. The name of the land was a reference to Sir William Edward Parry (one of the original Twelves and obviously based on the Artic navigator (1790-1855) and Emily's choice as chief man). In the map, drawn by Branwell, from left to right: Wellington's Land, Parry's Land, Ross's Land and Sneaky's Land in the north-east.


Categories: Emily Brontë, Juvenilia, Music

Emily Brontë's slim chanches of online dating

The Chicago Daily Herald reports the upcoming local theatre season which includes a production of a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights at the Lifeline Theatre:

Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" is a towering achievement of English romantic literature. See if Christina Calvit's world premiere adaptation for Lifeline Theatre (Sept. 10-Oct. 31, lifelinetheatre.com) brings out all of the pent-up passion of the stormy Yorkshire moors. (Scott C. Morgan)

The Hull Daily News does exactly the same with the Hull Truck Theatre. In October, Jane Thornton's adaptation will be on stage:

No sooner has Kaye left the building, than her daughter, actress Gaynor Faye, takes to the stage as Cathy in Wuthering Heights, alongside former Coronation Street actor Rupert Hill.

Opera News interviews Frédéric Chaslin, composer of a new Wuthering Heights opera (see previous posts) (libretto by PH Fisher):

Your book proposes new paths for music in the twenty-first century, calling for stylistic diversity, formal and rhythmic freedom and more use of visual media. How does your forthcoming opera, Wuthering Heights, put these precepts into practice?

FC: I mentioned that Hollywood had practically destroyed opera. Paradoxically, today I find that opera can be regenerated by using Hollywood techniques. Lots of operas are doing this. Look at the Ring in Los Angeles, or Moby-Dick in Dallas, with all its projections and other film techniques. That Ring cost about a third of the price for a new hospital. Nevertheless, Broadway and film — that's where you find the future of opera.

I wrote my Wuthering Heights completely using the vocabulary of film music while thinking of it truly as a film onstage, because I absolutely didn't think of the constraints of opera houses, like not changing scenes instantly. I ignored that complication. When I wanted an instant scene change, I did one, leaving it to the director to make it work. I'd even love to produce Wuthering Heights as a film before it's done in a theater. I'd like to partner with a director with whom we'd do an opera directly for film.

ON: Once your Wuthering Heights is produced, what impact do you hope to leave on your audience at the final curtain?
FC: It's very simple and clear. They should feel, "We'd like to listen to it again." Debussy remarked what a strange idea it was to think you could judge a piece of music by listening to it once. You need to listen twice. You need to create a desire for a second hearing. I want people to want to start over from the beginning. (David J. Baker)

Ruth Franklin talks about the online dating website alikewise.com in The New Republic:

I was hoping for someone a little more articulate. Time to expand the possibilities. I put in Philip Roth, Emily Brontë, Kafka, but the pickings were still slim.

We have run a search for Brontë and there are some Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and even one The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (no males, though).

The Pinewood Shepperton Studios have released its 2010 interim (not good) results. We read in the memo that Jane Eyre 2011 is considered one of the major productions of the year shot at the studios:

The largest production based at the Company’s studios during the period was Hugo Cabret (GK Films/Sony Pictures). Other productions using Pinewood Shepperton facilities included John Carter of Mars (Disney), Jane Eyre (Ruby Films), Clash of the Titans (Warner Bros) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Warner Bros).

The Times of India recalls several Indian adaptations of Western classics which were failures at the box office:

Despite superb music by Hemant Kumar, 'Kohraa' (1964), a desi version of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, collapsed at the cash counters. So did the Dilip Kumar-Waheeda Rehman-starrer 'Dil Diya Dard Liya' (1966) based on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. (Meenakshi Sinha)

Port Townsend Leader reviews a production of Chekhov's Three Sisters (Три сестры)

The three sisters grew up in Moscow and long to return there to escape the frustrations and confinements of life in the small village where they live. Their situation mirrors that of the Brontë sisters, Chekhov’s initial inspiration for the play.

Rant Rave discusses Chéri and La Fin de Chéri by Collette:

Reminders of a "Wuthering Heights" type fate-against-the-lovers and the "Picture of Dorian Gray" narcissism is in the mesh of this particular story. Setting, surroundings described in voluminous detail a tangible force. Think a slightly toned-down Baz Luhrman's "Moulin Rouge" atmosphere. (Veronika)

EDIT: In Haworth today:

Churchyard Challenge!
Take our special pack to the Haworth Churchyard; follow the graveyard trail, try your hand at grave rubbings, and have a close up view with our special bug catcher / magnifiers at some of the tiny living inhabitants of the churchyard...

Risky Regencies talks about Jane Eyre and poses the following question "When did you first read Jane Eyre? What's your favorite of the adaptations?". Two possible answers come from Thoughts from a Compulsive Reader who loves the book and BabblingFlow who gives you the chance to win an ARC copy of April Landner's modern retelling of the novel, Jane. The dissonant voice comes from Read, Reading, Read who finds the book "a bit contrived, cliche, and not fantastically written".

Bookworms posts with passion about Wuthering Heights; Saltaire Daily Photo posts about the possible real inspiration for Wuthering Heights, the farm: Top Withens and The Contemplations of Kate has watched Wuthering Heights 1992. Finally, a curiosity, ConejoThruTheLens, publishes a picture of Nicholas Olsen's home on Olsen Ranch during the filming of Wuthering Heights, circa 1939.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Opera, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

A Corsage and a Pocket Mirror

More curious Brontë-related items on etsy:

1. A Corsage by nellieandelsie:

Purple felt and paper flower corsage. Made from the pages of Charlotte and Emily Bronte books.

Flower is approx 6 1/2cm.

Please be aware that the corsage is made with book paper and Felt. The paper is suprisingly durable, however it doesn't like getting wet very much. It's therefore not suitable for wear on outer jackets/coats, unless it's lovely weather of course!

2. A Pocket Mirror by tartx:

This beautiful and collectible pocket mirror features a revamped painting of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë painted by their brother Branwell.

Each pocket mirror comes fabulously packaged individually as shown. If you would like more than the quantity available let me know and I will revise the listing to make more mirrors available.

* Pocket mirrors come packaged complete with a velvet bag for safe keeping.
* Dimensions: 2.25 Diameter.
* Design on one side with real glass mirror on the other side.

Categories: Weirdo

Weathering Heights and other news

Good news for the Brontëites from Down Under as Jane Eyre 2011 seems to have already a release date there: April 7, according to The Australian:

UNIVERSAL's coming year is packed full, with [...] Mia Wasikowska starring in Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre (April 7). (Michael Bodey)

While we wait to see that at last, The Herald (Ireland) mentions the previous screen adaptation of the novel in connection to Toby Stephens's career and his role as Mr Rochester.

A couple of news outlets mention Jean Rhys's sequel to Jane Eyre. The National (UAE) uses it as it usually is, as an example of a work of fiction based on someone else's previous literary creation:

So it isn’t particularly surprising that sometimes, authors take the somewhat safer option. They “borrow” characters from other writers’ works – the more famous, the better – and place them in their own books. The most notable, and successful, example is Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea; essentially a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, we discover the previous, colonial life of Mrs Rochester, before she is shut away in the attic of Thornfield Hall, supposedly mad.
Wide Sargasso Sea works because Mrs Rochester is an intriguing character for whom imagining an interesting backstory is easy – and Rhys is a fantastic writer. But all too often, borrowing characters in this way is a dangerous game to play. The wrath of precious fans of the originals is easily incurred and the books will always be compared with their more illustrious predecessors. (Ben East)

Booktryst - a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog - reports a few recent rare-book (and imaginary) findings such as the following:

"I smell fish," Salt sniffed, "and I'm not talking about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea Bass: 20 Lite N' Easy Meals. (Stephen Gertz)

Daily Express comments on a recent Q&A with Yoko Ono on her website where she made the following blunder:

shockhorrorDJ
Hi Yoko, have you ever been to Scotland?
Yes. I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful country, It always makes me think of Weathering Heights, my favorite book.

Yeah, and we love The Beetles!

For more laughs, PopCandy - a USA Today blog - suggests the work of cartoonist Kate Beaton.

Beaton's background makes her webcomic especially entertaining and (bonus!) educational. If you're not reading Hark! A Vagrant, you should check it out -- topics range from Benjamin Franklin to Henry VIII to the Brontë sisters.

Wuthering Heights is on BookBuzz's list of books that change with each reading. And the News-Sentinel includes Jane Eyre's 'Reader, I married him' in an article on how 'Famous lines from movies, other sources become part of vernacular'.

Discussions about the Twilight books goes on. Today, The Daily Reveille instructs,

Quit calling it the modernized “Romeo and Juliet” or “Wuthering Heights.” That’s an insult to authors, screenwriters and readers worldwide. (Kelly Hotard)

A couple of sites mention the Brontës plaque at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. The Manila Bulletin:

As usual, the church was packed with tourists, our class straining to see the ornate tombs of numerous monarchs, and the memorials of distinguished authors, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, T.S Eliot, John Keats, and many more. (Caitlin Alisa Coyiuto)

And Halifax-Plympton Recorder:

Chalk-white cliffs, rolling downs covered with thick mists. Green fields outlined by great hedges, cities combining Roman walls, Gothic cathedrals, and modern skyscrapers.
This was what I thought of when I thought of England. I also thought of Shakespeare’s theatre, Jane Austen’s ordered country homes, the Brontë sisters’ romantic moors, and the sleepy shire nestled in the quiet hills. [...]
The English students among us were thrilled to visit Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, where Shakespeare, Austen, Carroll, the Brontës, Lord Byron and dozens of other British authors and poets are honored or buried. (Casey Meserve)

Speaking of the moors, poet-turned-crime-writer Peter Robinson, explains to the Brisbane Times why he chose Brontë Country as the backdrop for his Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks series.

Brontë country was an obvious place to base his fiction, partly out of nostalgia, the need to write from knowledge and because Robinson liked the kind of regional English detective story that "throws in an inspector and a sidekick to look at the mores and social make-up of an area and the human psychology of its inhabitants". (Linda Morris)

As for the blogosphere, Anne's two novels are discussed: Shanna's Journal discusses The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and All That Is Gold and Livres et Lectures de Lili (in French) post about Agnes Grey. The Immaculate White Bed has written a Wuthering Heights-inspired poem. NotRobotic discusses 'Words and Images: Meaning and Signification in Jane Eyre'. Silvae (in German) posts about Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea. Les Brontë à Paris (in French) recreates/imagines a day in County Down in 1794. And finally The Squeee celebrates its first birthday (and briefly mentions some of the Brontë goings-on there in during this year), so congratulations on that!

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Brontëana, Brontëites, Haworth, Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

Technologies of Power

Another recently-published scholar book:

Technologies of Power in the Victorian Period Print Culture, Human Labor, and New Modes of Critique in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and George Eliot's Felix Holt
By John C. Murray
Cambria Press
ISBN-13: 9781604976687
ISBN: 1604976683

This study examines the ways in which technological changes initiated during the Victorian period have led to the diminution of speech as a mode of critique. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests. It enabled the creation of a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a industry and the emergence of a technical language and culture, a culture that precedes and predicts post-modern society.

The purpose of this study is to employ Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), and George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866) to evidence how the growth of capitalist production and the development of new technologies of industry within the early- to mid-Victorian periods inspired the prioritization of the printed word over oratory and speech as a means for fulfilling the linguistic power exchanges found common in spoken discourse. Inventions such as Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer’s high-speed printing press enabled mass production and low-cost readership among the working class, who experienced literacy on multiple levels: to educate themselves, to experience leisure and diversion, to confirm their religious beliefs, and to improve their labor skills. Much in the same ways that speech had been used to affirm intersubjectivity, print culture conditioned readers to accept uni-directional exchange of values and interests that would create a community of readers who would be responsive to the expansion of a new technical society and would eventually perform the routines of mechanized labor. Rather than merely romanticizing pre-technological cultures, the author suggests that the emergence of technologies of production and print culture within the early- to mid-Victorian periods precipitated the diminution of linguistic exchanges as techné or modes of revealing and critiquing transferences of power, and also for rivaling print culture’s representational claims of how linguistic exchanges had been conceptualized and experienced.

This book employs Victorian novelists such as Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot to address representations of speech in fictional discourse. Critics like Nancy Armstrong and Garrett Stewart have considered these representations without addressing the ways in which print culture engendered and valued new forms of speech, forms which might re-engage critique of the human condition. More recent publications like The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, by John Plotz, do not respond to the ways in which individuals use the collective voice of crowd formations to redefine and resituate their subjective identities. This book serves to fill this gap in Victorian studies.

Victorian novels are not, of course, pure representations of Victorian reality. However, many working-class Victorians engaged texts as authentic representations of society. How working-class readers then reconstructed their personal narratives in actuality suggests the affects of social assimilation upon subjective identity and advances the claim that Victorian novels did not provide solutions to the social and economic maladies they reported. Rather, they contextualized social and cultural problems without recognizing the dangers of how the decontextualized imagination of the reader locates placement within the same ontological and epistemological assumptions.

Technologies of Power in the Victorian Period is an informative study that will appeal to members of academic groups such as the British Women’s Writer’s Association and the North American Victorian Association. Although the book bears relevance to scholars and students of Victorian studies, it will also serve as a point of reference for curious readers engaged in studies of the effects of industrial technologies on language acquisition and dissemination during the nineteenth century.

The chapter devoted to Shirley is: Crowds, Mobs, and Spatial Separations in Brontë’s Shirley.

Categories: Books, Scholar, Shirley, Victorian Era

Plainly exquisite, Jane

The San Diego Reader reviews Jane Eyre 1996:

The chief reason to see this remake, and sufficient reason to have made it, is for the spectacle of the bony Charlotte Gainsbourg nibbling away at the meaty title role. (...)
Her face, perfect for the part, is not such as to contradict the character completely, much less deride her supposed sensitivity and intelligence and veracity, when she must describe herself as "plain." (We have "supermodel" Elle Macpherson, with Shirley Temple dimples and ringlets, for emphatic contrast.) All the same, we are free to disagree. Plainly exquisite, Jane. Exquisite, plainly. The natural pout of her outthrust chin, chipmunky stuffed cheeks, swollen lower lip, makes the slightest smile ("Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?") all the more precious and touching. And her neck, seemingly in a state of constant craning, gives to every facial expression and every glance an extra increment of curiosity, uncertainty, innocence, strain. Gainsbourg may be a somewhat limited actress, but her limits far surpass the rudimentary demands of this Ugly Duckling-cum-Cinderella archetype. The same cannot be said of William Hurt, who lacks some of the ruined nobility required in the role of Rochester. He doesn't lack the required adjective. (Duncan Shepherd)

This article on a Burnley F.C. website (Clarets MAD) contains a Brontë reference:

The origins of the 19^th century Thomas family are buried up there in the old chapel at Blackshawhead. My ancestors on the Thomas side were hill farmers and road makers up on the Wuthering Heights moors; before they all moved down into the valley to get away from the rain; find work in the mills and factories of the Industrial Revolution and get the bus to Turf Moor. (Dave Thomas)

The moors also get a reference in the Kingston Reporter:

This was what I thought of when I thought of England. I also thought of Shakespeare’s theatre, Jane Austen’s ordered country homes, the Brontë sisters’ romantic moors, and the sleepy shire nestled in the quiet hills. (Casey Meserve)

The author Cathy Hopkins selects the best book endings on SugarScape:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."
I picked this one because Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books and Heathcliff is one of the great bad boys of literature. The book spoke to my teenage self with a story of soul mates bound together but kept apart by circumstance – it was the Twilight for my generation, really.

Flamingo House Happenings posts about Romancing Miss Brontë; NotRobotic discusses displacement in Jane Eyre and Ye Ye Orh... sajer and The Here, the Now and the Books also post about Charlotte Brontë's novel; Roger Ratcliffe has uploaded to Flickr a recent picture of Top Withins.

Categories: Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture

A new scholar book with Brontë contents:

Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837–1925
by Cathrine O. Frank

* Imprint: Ashgate
* Published: June 2010
* Binding: Hardback
* ISBN: 978-1-4094-0014-1

Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of “curious wills” in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank’s examination of works by Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Categories: Books, Scholar

Wide Sargasso Sea in BBC Radio 7 (again)

A new chance to listen to listen to Margaret Busby's adaptation of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea on BBC Radio 7:

Wide Sargasso Sea (first aired on May 2004)
Read by Adjoa Andoh
Abridged by Margaret Busby

Monday to Friday, 3.00 PM

Monday, August 23 Episode 1
Tensions escalate amongst the former slaves on a Caribbean island.

Tuesday, August 24 Episode 2
Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway's mother marries an Englishman in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Wednesday, August 25 Episode 3
Without her brother and parted from her mother, heiress Antoinette is sent off to school.

Thursday, August 26 Episode 4
Fresh from England, Rochester weds Creole heiress Antoinette and takes her to Dominica.

Friday, August 27 Episode 5
Antoinette and Rochester's honeymoon develops into an intense love affair in Dominica.

Monday, August 30 Episode 6
Antoinette and Rochester's intense love affair in Dominica is threatened by rumour and betrayal.

Tuesday, August 31 Episode 7
Antoinette asks her old nurse Christophine to help restore her marriage.

Wednesday, September 1 Episode 8
Rochester accuses his new wife Antoinette of betrayal and their ravaged Eden falls apart.

Thursday, September 2 Episode 9
Antoinette returns to her faithless husband who now has control of her estate.

Friday, September 3 Episode 10
Rochester has imprisoned Antoinette in the attic of his English home.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Wide Sargasso Sea