You've got the legs of a Brontë sister

The Telegraph remembers that next year, 2011, marks the 150th anniversary of Patrick Brontë's death:

7 June   Patrick Brontë, father of Charlotte, Emily, Ann (sic) and Branwell, all of whom died before him, died 1861 (born 1777) (Christopher Howse)

Eddie Briben, gag writer of Morecambe and Wise, talks in the Daily Mail about the comic duo and remembers one of the first jokes he wrote for them:

This was one of the first jokes I wrote for them:
Eric Morecambe: Ern, You could be another John Grisham.
Ernie Wise: I can’t play snooker.
Eric: You could be another Brontë sister.
Ernie: I can’t sing.
Eric: No, but you’ve got the legs for it.
Now he had the chance to be a straight man and a comic ­character in his own right. I had them alternating funny lines between them — something they hadn’t done before.

The Washington Post reviews Erin Blakemore's The Heroine's Bookshelf (which is also discussed on Books, the universe, and everything):

What to do when you're stuck in bed with a cold, facing a crisis of faith or dealing with a bad breakup? Erin Blakemore offers a few unorthodox prescriptions: Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables," Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." (Lisa Bonos)

The Sacramento Press presents a local exhibition of artists (the Second Annual Sacramento Writer’s Brush) combining art and literature this way:

What did Charlotte and Emily Brontë have in common with Kurt Vonnegut and Sylvia Plath, besides writing? Come find out at The Second Annual Sacramento Writer’s Brush event. Can’t wait for the answer? Here is a hint: They all used both sides of their brains, the right to create art and the left to write and intergrated the two halves. Some of our greatest writers were also artists. (Mary Dubois)

Flavorwire remembers the visit of Patti Smith, known Brontëite, to the NYPL as one of their favourite cultural moments of 2010. The visit included the Berg Collection:

Patti Smith’s evening at LIVE from the NYPL on April 29th began with a visit to The Berg Collection, where NYPL curator Isaac Gewirtz had pulled a selection of rare materials, including relief etched prints by William Blake, Virginia Woolf’s walking stick, and Charlotte Bronte’s portable writing desk.  (Meg Stemmler, LIVE from the NYPL)

You can also check BrontëBlog's visit to the Berg Collection some time ago here.

New Lenox Patch interviews the new director of the New Lenox Public Library District, Kate Hall:

"I also read Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre every year. Each time I read them I get more out of them. (Michael Sewall)

The Sayre Morning Times publishes some New Year resolutions:

The Sayre High senior sat behind a Sayre Public Library desk with fellow clerk Daye Moreno Thursday night, batting around ideas for New Year’s resolutions. (...)
Moreno’s resolution?
“I want to read one classic novel per month next year,” she said. The first book, Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” is not going so well. (Ed Medina)

The Western Mail lists the best Welsh theatre for 2011. A production of Wuthering Heights is quoted:

Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë’s gothic tale of tortured love is brought to the stage in all its turbulent, passionate glory. This exhilarating and vibrant adaptation of the literary classic brings to life the all-encompassing love between the silent, brooding Heathcliff and the emotionally unstable Catherine. Their destructive relationship is one of the most enduring love stories of English literature. This is an Aberystwyth Arts Centre Production in co-production with Creu Cymru, Theatr Mwldan, Theatr Brycheiniog, Taliesin Arts Centre and The Riverfront. (Karen Price)

More websites waiting for Jane Eyre 2011: I Am Rogue, North Bay Nugget, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Tulare Advance-Register, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Toronto Star:

Jane Eyre
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender
Story: Though smitten with her handsome new employer, a governess realizes he’s got something hidden in the attic.
Best reason to brave the elements: You won’t want to miss out on the latest wave of Brontë-mania — there’s a new Wuthering Heights coming, too. (Jason Anderson)

And Andrea Arnolds's Wuthering Heights in the Daily Express or HitFix which says:

Yes, these stories have been told many times, but when you add filmmakers like Cary Fukunaga and Andrea Arnold to the mix, suddenly there's something fresh about the perspective, and suddenly, it makes a lot of sense to tell the stories again.  "Eyre" has Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, a powerhouse team-up to be sure, and "Heights" features an unknown cast, which could be exactly right with Arnold calling the shots. (Drew Mcweeney)

By the way, it has been known for some time now (Film Music Reporter) that Dario Marianelli (Oscar winner for Atonement) is the confirmed composer of Jane Eyre 2011.

A Jane Eyre reader ask for reading suggestions in the Wall Street Journal; The Imperial Republican talks about a local bookclub which recently read Charlotte Brontë's novel; Janet Mullany recommends Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow on Risky Regencies; Chrisbookarama gives her annual awards to the best and worse of her reads and we have a couple of Brontës:

Best Quirky Book: I don't think they get any quirkier than The Brontës Went to Woolworths.
Dude Didn't Need a Biography: Though you got to give Daphne du Maurier props for trying, Branwell Brontë didn't need a biography (The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë).

 We agree on the first one, but we have to disagree on the second one.

Life in the Thumb selects Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë as one of the best books read in 2010. Some blogs review or post about Jane Eyre: Review by Aves..., Lauraime's Letters (in Dutch... and giving Jane's authorship to her sister Emily), Två träd i en bokskog (in Swedish), bits, pieces and crumbs, Discovering the Classics. Rosiepowell2000 reviews positively Jane Eyre 1997.

Categories: Biography, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Patrick Brontë, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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2010. A Brontë year in images

Our traditional summary of the year in images (and with a little help from the wonders of Picasa 3.8):

The Brontë year in... books/audiobooks:

In DVD Releases (and a radio production):

In Arts:

In Theatre and Dance... and an opera (in concert):

In Music:

Categories: Messages from BB

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Sounds Glorious

John Sutherland selects for The Guardian a top ten of books about (or against) literary criticism. Among them:

Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1978)
Showalter was the critic who realised that after the breakthroughs of the women's movement in the 1960s a new map of literature was required. More particularly some mapping out of the zone in which women talk to women. Why does Jane Eyre mean more to a woman reader than a man? Or does it? Essentially, Showalter takes Virginia Woolf's "room of one's own" thesis and applies it to fiction. In her career she went on to help frame a whole new syllabus area.

Singapore Today visits Dublin and talks about the Gate Theatre production of Jane Eyre:

I wanted to check out the Dublin arts scene, so I bought myself a ticket to watch Jane Eyre at the Gate Theatre. (Okay, it was written by Charlotte Brontë, who isn't Irish, but the theatre is!) And who should be playing Jane but Andrea Corr (yes, she of The Corrs fame). This was a particularly light adaptation by Alan Stanford and quite enjoyable; Andrea made a rather uncharacteristically merry Jane, or maybe it was because all I could hear - despite the gravity of the words she was uttering - was just that familiar, high-pitched lilt trilling, "We are so young now, we are so young, so young now ..."  (May Seah)

IFC lists ten movies that cannot be missed in 2011:

"Wuthering Heights"
Directed by Andrea Arnold
Rising Brit auteur Arnold ("Fish Tank," "Red Road") takes her beautifully gritty aesthetic to the classics, with this reportedly "rawer" take on Emily Brontë's 1847 tale of doomed teenage lovers. The faithful adaptation recently made headlines in the U.K. when it was announced that James Howson, a young black actor with no prior film credits, was cast as Heathcliff. Eighteen-year-old actress Kaya Scodelario (known from Brit TV series "Skins") stars as the ill-fated Catherine Earnshaw. According to The Guardian, key scenes were filmed at Moor Close, "a desolate farmhouse without electricity or running water in the North Yorkshire moors." Sounds glorious! (Anthony Kaufman)

Delaware County News talks about the recent visit of April Lindner, author of Jane, to the Acamedy of Notre Dame de Namur (Villanova, PA):

April Lindner, the best-selling author of Jane, visited the Academy of Notre Dame’s Connelly Library on Friday, Dec. 10, to read portions of her book and talk to students about the writing process. Jane, a contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre, poses the question, what if Jane Eyre fell in love with a rock star? More than 50 interested members of the Notre Dame community attended the book talk. 

Chally on Feministe shares her reading plans for the coming year:

The plan is rereading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, then reading Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox. (Yes, I am a woman of widely varying reading interests.)

The Bookworm reviews Alice Hoffman's Here on Earth; La Collezionista di Dettagli posts about Maddalena De Leo's Italian translation of Charlotte Brontë's Henry Hastings; Meu Querido Diario reviews Wuthering Heights (in Portuguese); Simplyjessica's Blog loved reading Jane Eyre and the Brontë Sisters celebrates the anniversary of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë's marriage (December 29, 1812).

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Juvenilia, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Translationss, Wuthering_Heights

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Awake with Anne

Tomorrow, December 31, on BBC Radio 3, a new chance to listen to Words and Music: Awake! which includes a poem by Anne Brontë:

Friday, 17:00 on BBC Radio 3
A sequence of music, poetry and prose united by the theme of awakenings.
Including readings by Peter Marinker and Hattie Morahan from the work of Mary Shelley, A E Housman, Edward Thomas, Anne Brontë and Percy Bysshe Shelley. With music by Handel, Bach, Stravinsky and Britten.

(...) The possibilities of sensual and spiritual awakening through nature is heard in Anne Brontë’s “Lines Composed in a Windy Wood” whilst in “Reveille, from A Shropshire Lad” A E Housman urges us up out of sunlit beds and into the world, associating sleep with death. 

 Producer: Natalie Steed
 Lines Composed in a Windy Wood read by Hattie Morahan

Categories: Audio-Radio, Poetry

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Jackie O at Colibri

Los Angeles Times reviews several books about Jacqueline Kennedy. Particularly about William Kuhn's Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books it says,

She assembled several notable private libraries over the course of her life and, as Kuhn says in his introduction, her favorite works were Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa," Colette's "Cheri" and Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea." (Tim Rutten)

The Times of India talks about fog in novels:

The fog has also been described graphically in the climax of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of Baskervilles. In Gothic novels, the weather becomes an integral device for drama. Novelist Emily Brontë calls it "a silvery vapour" in Wuthering Heights. (Kim Arora)

The Hindu reviews Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and compares it, of course, to Jane Eyre:

So they will live like Jane Eyre and her blind, humbled Rochester in a solitude of two, but Mrs. de Winter enjoys none of Jane's certainties. (Latha Anantharaman)

Nouse has an article about UK's Business Secretary Vince Cable:

To quote Jane Eyre (and Lewis Bretts) we are “but human and fallible”, so should the future of British media be put in jeopardy all because of Cable’s hubris?

Windy City Times remembers the Lifeline Theatre's production of Wuthering Heights:

But there were also stage pictures designed to evoke mood over location, like those by Donahue for Lifeline's Wuthering Heights or Jorge Felix for Urban Theater's Brainpeople (which also introduced Marilyn Camacho into the wet-dream goddess pantheon, right alongside Brenda Barrie) and the perennial boat-in-bottle challenges, the prize once again going to Theo Ubique for its up-close-and-cozy productions of Chess and Cats. (...)Goodman's The Long Red Road dared to cast an amputee, Katy Sullivan, in the role of an amputee (ironically, the most active figure onstage), and Wuthering Heights elevated Gregory Isaac to the ranks of sexy historical heroes (currently led by Nick Sandys and Peter Greenberg, but don't ignore AARP pin-up Mike Nussbaum wearing tights for Chicago Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew). (Mary Shen Barnidge)

The new Residence bar in San Francisco is described as follows in the San Francisco Weekly:

Gone are all of the thrift-store couches, kitschy lamps, and graffitied restrooms. In their stead is a long room that looks like Jane Eyre's boudoir, with a fireplace facade, dark wood along the walls, more upscale lounge chairs, and a painted portrait of an 18th-century woman over the mantel. (Katy St. Clair)

The Lansing Book Reviews Examiner is reading Jane Eyre:

On my quest to read the classics I was excited to see that most e-readers have them already supplied. Jane Eyre is an intriguing character and I am enjoying reading bits and pieces of this at time, but it is a hard one to stick to when there are so many others out there. (Allison Monroe)

We are not sure if the writer at Calgary Motherhood Examiner has really read Wuthering Heights when we read something like this:

Go with the classics. If you are unsure about what to hand over to your child, remember the classic tales that you once enjoyed as a kid. Read a classic tale with them each evening before bed, or hand over your old copy of Wuthering Heights or Of Mice and Men. (Cheryl Senger) 

Beauer County Times, Sky Movies, MTV Movies  Blog, Collider anticipate Jane Eyre 2011. Collider also says about its trailer:

Selling a costume period drama isn’t easy, but this trailer makes Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë ’s classic novel come off as a gripping gothic tale.  Bonus points for using music from Suspiria. (Matt Goldberg)

Bookworm Meets Bookworm posts about Jane Eyre;  Rochester's Whore reviews Wide Sargasso Sea 1993; The Bookaholic Princess reviews Jane Slayre (in Portuguese); Wuthering Heights is a book which doesn't cause indiference: you love it (Almost True) or you hate it (The Smug Cloud)

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

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Remember, remember the releases of September

Here are a few dates to write down on your brand-new 2011 diary depending on your location.

Up until now, and as we posted before, the dates and places known to us for the release of Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre were the following:

US (March 11, limited), Australia (April 7 or May 26), Germany (April 14 September 8), Spain (September 23), Denmark (September).

We now have a couple more dates and countries. According to Launching Films, the UK release is scheduled for September 9 and the film is to be distributed there by Universal Films.

The distributor in The Netherlands is to be carried out by A-Film Distribution which gives June 9 as the release date in that country.

We must admit to being a little confused by all these dates, particularly the European ones, being months away from each other. And once again we must regret the fact that the film is so completely missing the opportunity of making it to the Academy Awards.

As for Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, both Launching Films and the IMDb give the UK release date as September 30 (which would mean both productions - Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - would be realeased in the UK in the same month!). The film there is to be distributed by Artificial Eye.

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

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Emily Brontë's at Leeds City Station

The Guardian's section Comment is free says that,

Every big town or city has its poet, and so every big station should too. Dylan Thomas in Swansea; WH Auden at Euston or, better still, Carlisle, near where his famous night train crossed the border; William Wordsworth should be on the little platform at Windermere, at the end of the line he objected to but which now does its best to keep cars away from the Lake District; Emily Brontë at Leeds; Thomas Hardy at Dorchester West.

Well, thinking about links with the Brontës, probably York or Scarborough (and obviously Keighley or Haworth) have more solid claims than Leeds.

On Phillyburbs we read about Christmas presents:

My little sister was gifted with a copy of "Wuthering Heights" which she has never read before. She seemed pretty excited about diving into the story of Catherine and Heathcliff. (Deidre Wengen)

MyBangalore (India) makes their best movies of 2010 list and includes Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island which

[Dennis] Lehane [the author of the original novel] described the novel as a hybrid of the works of the Brontë sisters and the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 

BBC Radio 6's The Best of Adam Buxton's Big Mixtape: Oddens selected Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights in their latest broadcast; Risky Regencies recommends Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow; Damselfly wants to read Jane Eyre (a book that electroluminescence loves). Now, some reviews: La favola della botte reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in Italian; Reviewed by Katie and Quero Ser Bookholic (in Portuguese) do Wuthering Heights; Mrs. O'Dell Reads reviews Villette and Dead White Guys: An Irreverrent Guide to Classic Literature reviews very negatively The Professor.

Categories: Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, References, The Professor, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Villette, Wuthering Heights

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Boyfriend Breathing

A recent and an upcoming novel:
1. A recently published novel with references to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, through Rochester and Heathcliff:

The Boyfriend of the month club
Maria Geraci
* Pub. Date: December 2010
* Publisher: Berkley Trade; Original edition (December 7, 2010)
* ISBN-13: 9780425236505
* ISBN: 0425236501

This sexy, funny new novel asks: Can a woman find a modern-day Mr. Darcy in Daytona Beach?At thirty, Grace O'Bryan has dated every loser in Daytona Beach. After the ultimate date-from-hell, Grace decides to turn her dwindling book club into a Boyfriend of the Month Club, where women can discuss the eligible men in their community. Where are the real life twenty-first century versions of literary heroes such as Heathcliff and Mr. Darcy?
Could it be successful and handsome Brandon Farrell, who is willing to overlook his disastrous first date with Grace and offers financial help for her parents' failing Florida gift shop? Or maybe sexy dentist Joe Rosenblum, who's great with a smile but not so great at commitment? Unfortunately, like books, men cannot always be judged by their covers...

The author is interviewed on Borders Blog:

One of most enjoyable things about writing this story was that I had to reread the romantic classics that I referenced in the book. I spent lots of hours catching up on all my favorites like Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Emma, to name a few. Best. Research. Ever!

 2. And an upcoming book as presented on Publishers Lunch (via the Facebook of the author):

Here's the official announcement: Eve Marie Montt's A Breath of Eyre, in which a 21st-century girl finds herself transported into the novel Jane Eyre, the first in a Gothic Revival trilogy, to Martin Biro in a three-book deal, for publication in Spring 2012, by April Eberhardt.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, References

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Yorkshire Christmas

Keighley News talks about the DVD Mike Harding's Christmas in Yorkshire:

Haworth is featured in a new DVD exploring how Christmas is traditionally celebrated in Yorkshire.
“Mike Harding’s Christmas in Yorkshire” is presented by the Manchester-born comedian, musician and broadcaster.
The programme sees him pay a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum to find out how the district’s most famous literary family marked the festive occasion.
He also travels to many other parts of the historic three Ridings, sampling performances by brass bands and choirs while learning how the county’s history has helped shape the way in which Britons observe Christmas.
The DVD is available from The Dalesman magazine, Amazon, HMV and at selected visitor information centres.

As we posted some days ago:

Visiting the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth, Mike [Harding, author of Beautiful North] is surprised to discover that the traditional image of a cosy Victorian Christmas wasn’t quite the reality for the Brontë family. Brontë expert Dr Juliet Barker tells him there’s barely a mention of Christmas in letters documenting the Brontës’ lives. The only documented festive fact is a newly-married Charlotte and her husband distributing Christmas money around the village in 1854. (Emma Clayton)

The Washington Post talks about teens reviewing YA literature and mentions this anecdote about April Lindner's Jane:

Lily, who attends Westland Middle School in Bethesda, said her love of reading has intensified since she became a reviewer. She said she has read "a lot of cool authors."
Plus, reviewing has a certain cachet, she points out.
Some girls show off designer clothes, Lily said. She shows off books. "I get to flaunt the books to my friends," she said.
One day, she walked into a bookstore and spotted "Jane," a modernized version of "Jane Eyre." Lily had read it before the wider public probably knew it was coming, she said, which was "just sort of awesome." (Donna St. George)

Hogwarts Professor continues analysing Jane Eyre. Today: Genre and Gender Revulsion and Consequent Critical Disdain for Jane Eyre. Readin' and Dreamin' has just received Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow and the Brontë Sisters has got several Brontë-related books; the Gruppo di Lettura Brice's House are reading Wuthering Heights (in Italian).

Categories: Books, Fiction, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights

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The Orient Express in Mexico

A translation and a book of short stories with a Brontë twist:

1. A short stories compilation published in Germany but written in English:

Dark Passages
Monika Hartenauer & Jakob Möritz (eds.)
Books on Demand GMBH, 2010
ISBN: 978-3842326071

Ladies and gentlemen, please step back, the Orient Express is about to depart … but not everyone who boarded the train in Paris will leave it — alive …
Who will survive these mysterious events, and who will fall prey to equally mysterious passengers? Meet a glamorous cast of murderers, thieves, vampires, and many others on a magnificent journey of the Orient Express in the cold December of 1899.

As this article in the Mannheimer Morgen confirms the book includes a story where Jane Eyre travels with Dorian Gray in the Orient Express: Jane on the Train by Marjolijin Storm.

2. A Mexican edition of Wuthering Heights:

Cumbres borrascosas
Emily Brontë
Translation and Foreword: Alejandro Pareja
ISBN: 978-84-414-2660-3
Universidad Veracruzana, 2010
Colección: Clásicos. Biblioteca EDAF

Esta borrascosa historia de amor, ambientada en escenarios exóticos y entre exaltaciones poéticas, es la máxima expresión de la narrativa romántica. La casa de la cumbre y la narración de la sirvienta Nellie Deams [sic] envuelven al lector en un halo de misterio que empapa el relato de trágicas pasiones amorosas.

The Boletín de la Dirección Editorial de la Universidad Veracruzana mentions the publication of this and other translations.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Translations, Wuthering Heights

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Favourite Rebel

The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) interviews the author Pauline Melville:

Who are your favourite rebels in literature?
(...) As for my favourite rebels in literature, well I suppose Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ is the first one that comes to mind.

And Kindle Author interviews the author Barbara Alfaro:

David Wisehart: What one book written by someone else, do you wish you’d written yourself?
Barbara Alfaro: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

The San Antonio Express-News selects the best books of 2010. Clare B. Dunkle's The House of Dead Maids is among them:

San Antonio young adult author Clare Dunkle admits that “Wuthering Heights” snared her as child. She snared us with “The House of the Dead Maids” (Henry Holt, $15.99), a spooky, creepy prequel to Brontë's masterpiece that looks into the origins of 19th-century English literature's most mysterious character, Heathcliff.

The Denver Post's editor choice includes Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair; Complete & Unabridged reviews positively Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey; Shiftybox's Blog discusses Wuthering Heights in French; Vanilia & Chocolate posts icons of Wuthering Heights 1970.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Brontëites, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights

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"Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave"

Jane Eyre in two different contexts:

1. As a mistress (although she never was actually):

Mistresses
The History of the Other Woman
Elizabeth Abbott

* ISBN 9780715639467
* October 2010
* Duckworth Publishers

She has been known as the ‘kept woman’, the ‘fancy woman’ and the ‘other woman’. She is both a fictional character and flesh-and-blood human being. But who is she, really? What do Madame de Pompadour, Heloise, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Eyre and Camilla Parker-Bowles have in common? Why do women become mistresses, and what is it like to have a private life that is usually also a secret life? Is a mistress merely a wife-in-waiting, or is she the very definition of the modern emancipated, independent female?
In Mistresses Elizabeth Abbott intelligently probes the motives and morals of some of history’s most infamous and fascinating women. Drawing intimate portraits of those who have – either by chance, coercion or choice – assumed this complex role, from Chinese concubines and European royal mistresses to mobster molls and trophy dolls, Mistresses offers a rich blend of history, personality and cultural study.

Jane Eyre appears in Chapter XII: Fallen Women, in the company of Hester Prynne, Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina.

2. And as Charlotte Brontë's alter ego in Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre which is republished by Constable & Robinson:

Becoming Jane Eyre

Sheila Kohler
# Paperback: 256 pages
# Publisher: Constable & Robinson. Corsair (1 Jun 2010)(*)
# ISBN-10: 1849010862
# ISBN-13: 978-1849010863

The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent.
So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its center are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre.

 (*) According to the publishers website the release date is August 4, 2011.

Categories: Books, Fiction, Jane Eyre

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On a Christmas Day

The Rock Hill Herald talks about a course at Winthrop University:

This fall, Gregg Hecimovich, chairman of the English Department at Winthrop University, and graduate students in his "Slave Narratives and the Novel" class explored a novel about a fugitive slave in an effort to determine the author's identity.
Identifying who wrote the novel - called "The Bondswoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Slave Recently Escaped from North Carolina" - is an important step in learning more about slavery and the people who suffered.(...)
Graduate student Kim Pace has found similarities between Crafts' novel and Jane Eyre, a novel written around the same time - not by an American slave but by Charlotte Brontë, an English woman. (Jamie Self)

The Herald Sun (Australia) is also eager to see Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre:

Another red-hot Aussie, Mia Wasikowska, should satisfy costume drama fans with a new big-screen version of Jane Eyre. Both films are due in May. (James Wigney)

As far as we know, April 7 is the Australian release of Jane Eyre 2011. EDIT: According to other sources the release is May 26.

The West Australian presents Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943) (see TV alerts on our sidebar) like this:

Killer old-school British horror movie that owes a large debt to Jane Eyre. From the team of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur (Cat People), it's loaded with sinister imagery and creepy atmospherics. Frances Dee plays a young American nurse who travels to Haiti to care for an elderly woman. The nurse becomes interested in voodoo and starts messing around with a pair of brothers. The final ritual scene is one of the most-mimicked sequences in horror. (AAP)

Diario de Jerez (Spain) talks about the poetry book Tríptico de un fuego by Teresa, Remedios y Rosa María Arjona:

"Cuando lo presentamos a la Editorial Torremozas, que se mantiene desde hace casi treinta años contra viento y marea fomentando y apoyando la poesía escrita por mujeres, lo definieron como "un libro mágico, original, único en el panorama poético desde las hermanas Brontë". (R.D.) (Microsoft translation)

Rodrigo Fresán in Página 12 (Argentina) remembers the young reader he used to be:

Después, la fantasía de los cuentos de hadas quedaba atrás para ser suplantada por jóvenes a los que se les abría la puerta para que salieran a jugar al juego de la realidad: Heidi y Tom Sawyer, las Mujercitas y los Hombrecitos, el tesoro de Long John Silver y el Nautilus del Capitán Nemo, y acaso las primeras grandes novelas inquietantes con la que nos cruzábamos: la desenfrenada Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë, El conde de Montecristo de Alejandro Dumas y la muy irónicamente titulada Grandes esperanzas de Charles Dickens, donde ya se nos advertía de los inflamables riesgos del amor y de los dolores del crecimiento y de la sed de venganza como fuerza existencial.  (Microsoft translation)

Clarín (Argentina) is reissuing books from the juvenile Robin Hood collection. The introduction to books for a whole Argentinian generation:

El catálogo de Robin Hood apuntaba a los clásicos juveniles : Salgari, Verne, Mark Twain, Stevenson. Entre las niñas, los best sellers eran Heidi (Juana Spyri), Mujercitas (Louisa May Alcott) y Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronté).  (Microsoft translation)

Regrettably, no reissue from the original Jane Eyre edition (with cover and illustrations from Ernesto R. García) is scheduled yet.

Le Magazine Littéraire interviews author Léonora Miano:

Je suis moi-même la mère d’une jeune Afropéenne de quinze ans : elle adore la cuisine camerounaise, mais pour le reste…Je nous trouve de réelles différences culturelles ! C’est très difficile de lui faire écouter du jazz, par exemple. Pour l’instant elle veut écouter Muse et Led Zeppelin, lire Les Hauts de hurlevent. Elle est le produit de son environnement. (Camille Thomine) (Microsoft translation)

NPR mentions the Puppini Sisters' cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights; Think Me a Story and A Utah Mom's Life have both read Wuthering Heights; The Hobby Go-Round posts about Jane Eyre; ScribbleManiac describes minutely a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights

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Happy Christmas!

One more year the BrontëBlog team would like to wish one and all a very happy Christmas. May you all spend these days in the best of company. And may all of you wake up on Christmas morning to find that a little Brontë something slipped under the tree during the night.

Our very best wishes to you all.

Picture credits: Haworth Parsonage, February 2010, by Sarah Barrett (thanks!).

Categories: Messages from BB

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Christmas Eve news

The Irish Times summarises the 2010 year in Irish theatre. The Gate Theatre's production of Jane Eyre is mentioned:

The Gate continued to excel (...). Jane Eyre rounded off the year with an enjoyable night of cosy winter theatre. (redframewhitelight)

The production is reviewed in The Munster Express:

There are at least seven pantos running in Dublin, Jane Eyre at The Gate has been packing them in and will run until the end of January. This Alan Stanford adaptation and direction is very faithful to Charlotte Brontë’s book and the clever marketing idea of casting Andrea Corr in the title role, is inspiring and effective. She assumes a plain, hair scraped back school-marm look but she radiates the inner confidence in the role.
It is not a story I particularly like, as the central character is such a subservient doormat in a novel that drags the more you read it.
Stephen Brennan as Mr Rochester is dominating but his sneer slips over into comedy a few times, especially when he got loud audience reaction.

The Yorkshire Post reviews the film Gulliver's Travels by Rob Letterman. The article begins like this:

The movie market place is littered with the desiccated shells of literary classics plundered for their riches by shallow producers looking for a fast buck. From William Shakespeare to Emily Brontë, the road is a long one. (Tony Earnshaw)

The Plymouth Herald has a curious story, a ten-year-old boy's letter to Santa Claus from ninety years ago. The letter was found after the death of its owner.

His son David said: "The letter sums up his character. He was a great reader. We had collections of Dickens and Brontë."

The Bradley Bunch posts about Wuthering Heights among other books; Querida Jane continues reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in Spanish.

Categories: Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Celtic Fall

The latest album by Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra, Song of Solstice, contains a version of the poem Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Brontë. The song was first included on the 2005 album A Holiday Feast, Vol. 8 with vocals by Annie Haslam. We don't know whether this version is the same one or it has been recorded again:

Track 7. Fall, Leaves, Fall   4:18 (Listen here)

The Maryland Gazette talks to Jennifer Cutting:

Jordan Edwards: You and Steve work at the Folklife Center. Does that provide an advantage when it comes to finding new music?
JC: Absolutely. We have good research chops because we spend every day here helping other researchers find what they are looking for in our collection. I happened to take a book off the shelf and it fell open to this song, "Time to Remember the Poor." I had been looking for a winter song. I said, "Wow. That's the one." I found an [Emily] Brontë poem, "Fall, Leaves, Fall," deep within the library's collection.

Categories: Music, Poetry

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Eerier than Ever

Several film news outlets continue updating their Jane Eyre 2011 information as The Film Stage, Movieweb or Film.com (which describes the film "as spiced with heart-fluttering amour like and eerier-than-ever" (Christine Champ)) but the main part of them discuss the release of the Forbes annual list of the highest grossing actors of 2010. Mia Wasikowska is number 2:

$1.03 billion
The virtually unknown actress scored big in 2010 with Disney's new Alice in Wonderland. The film was the second-highest-grossing of the year with $1 billion. But Wasikowska also starred in the critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right. That film earned a respectable $29 million on an estimated budget of $4 million.

Therefore, her role in Jane Eyre 2011 is also mentioned in the Daily Mail, Gather, Starpulse, Chicago Independent Press, Contactmusic, Boston Herald, Limelife, Current Movies Reviews, Thaindian News, MSNBC, The Australian, CBC News, The CelebrityCafe, AfterEllen, The Adelaide Advertiser...

The New York Times lists Jane Eyre among good depictions of childhood in the 19th-century:

Something romantic about the 19th century made it a great era for artists to enter into the imaginations of children. Thanks to Tchaikovsky’s music — with its blend of fantasy, humor, suspense and vehemence, and its “Gulliver’s Travels”-type changes of scale between the miniature and the colossal — it’s not too much to place the “The Nutcracker” ballet among the many great 19th-century depictions of childhood. It takes company among E. T. A. Hoffmann’s original “Nutcracker” tale, “Jane Eyre,” “David Copperfield,” Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, “Huckleberry Finn,” the “Alice” books and the opera “Hänsel und Gretel.” (Alastair Macaulay)

Novelist Debbie Izzo is interviewed by Hinsdale Suburban Life:

What do you read for fun?
I like classic literature. My favorite book is ‘Jane Eyre.’ I read it every summer. (Renee Tomell)

Gay City News recommends the New York performances of Edna O'Brien's Haunted. In conversation with the author, she confesses:

I told O’Brien that, often, one would do well to see what Isherwood pans and avoid what he likes (“Passing Strange,” “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” “American Idiot”), and she said, “A lot of my friends have told me that. But with this play, I think I get ideas in my sleep. I’m very interested in people who live on the edge of the buzz and glamour of London. I chose the name Blackheath for the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Berry because it was the nearest I could get to ‘Wuthering Heights.’ (David Noh)

Buffalo News gives some advices about SAT/ACT exams:

Reading comprehension and essay writing often go hand-in-hand, and can be improved through reading classic novels by authors such as Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë as well as more modern works like Harry Potter. (Beatrice Preti)

Hogwarts Professor begins a series of posts about reading Jane Eyre as a fairy tale; Gdzieś w Azji / Solidarni z Białorusią! posts about Jane Eyre 2006 (in Polish); Ler para Divertir (in Portuguese) and Un blog de pierres (in French) review Jane Eyre; Stuff That Doesn't Make Me Cry posts about Wuthering Heights.

And finally a special mention to a new short story just published on December Lights: Merrie Haskell's Currer Bell Comes to America where Charlotte and Anne visit America via the Bermuda Triangle.

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

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Latest Editions

Simon & Brown Publishers have recently released a couple of editions of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights:

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
* Pub. Date: November 2010
* Publisher: Simon & Brown
* Format: Paperback , 392pp
* ISBN-13: 9781936041404
* ISBN: 1936041405

Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
* Pub. Date: November 2010
* Publisher: Simon & Brown
* Format: Paperback , 336pp
* ISBN-13: 9781936041589
* ISBN: 1936041588

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights

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Still buzzing over the Brontë sisters (and proud of)

Jane Eyre 2011 appears in several news outlets. The Seattle Times or Current Movies and News look at the films in 2011:

-- "Jane Eyre" (March 11). Why another "Jane Eyre," you say? Because the trailer looks delicious, because Mia Wasikowska can do no wrong these days (did you know she was Australian? I didn't), because it's one of my favorite books ever, and because I haven't seen a perfect "Jane Eyre" on screen yet (though the 2006 BBC/PBS miniseries version, starring Ruth Wilson, is pretty close). (Moira MacDonald)

As far as we can tell, known release dates for the film to date are: US (March 11, limited), Australia (April 7 or May 26), Spain (September 23), Denmark (September), Germany (April 14 September 8).

The Florida Times-Union reviews April Lindner's Jane. It seems that the reviewer has missed the point of this retelling... or of any YA retelling as a matter of fact.

The recently published "Jane" is Professor Lindner's "reworking" of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 classic novel "Jane Eyre."
Aimed at the burgeoning, and lucrative, young-adult female market, Lindner succumbs to her own adolescent fantasies by turning Jane's love interest into an aging rock star, addled by many years of drug use. She also tosses in some adult obscenities (Modern people talk like that, you know.)
Other than these facts, "Jane" is a direct rip-off, down to the crazy wife in the attic. Professor Lindner even uses the same names - sort of. Brontë's Thornfield is Thornfield Park. The man Brontë named St. John Rivers is called River St. John. We could continue to heap blame on Lindner ad nauseam. The real culprit in this sordid affair is modern book publishing. Poppy, an edgy imprint of Little, Brown and Co. wants the dough. It's easy - and pervertedly fun - to imagine the evil marketing department commissioning the work. You just know the hypothetical dialogue included a phrase such as "lop off the first third of Brontë's masterpiece to keep it to a marketable length."
There is a light in this bleak tunnel. This sliced and diced version might entice your child to read the real "Jane." My wife and I did spend an enjoyable afternoon, comparing it to and revisiting Brontë's classic.
Who would say, "(O)h romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth." (Tim O'Connell)

The Cincinnati City-Beat asks local musicians for their best list of songs:

Eric Nally of Foxy Shazam
“Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush
One of my best friends recommended this to me and now every time I hear it I think of him.

The Telegraph (Calcutta) talks about a local exhibition of paintings by young artists:

Rajendra Kumar Pradhan’s huge untitled work is as intriguing as it is beautiful. You realise with a shock as you look at the painting that the pale figure in the left-hand corner, suspended like a sprite against the bluish darkness, is staring back at you from behind the windowpane, which is the canvas. She reminds you of Wuthering Heights’s Catherine — the waif pressing her face against the window to peer into the warm, lighted room from which she is eternally excluded. (Anusua Mukherjee)

John Weeks from The San Bernardino Sun has personal issues (a childhood trauma perhaps?) with scholars:

Scholars, on the other hand, are critics gone to seed. They still are chewing on, and slowly digesting, works of art that were created centuries ago. Don't ask them about this week's bestseller list. They're still buzzing over the Brontë sisters.

Today's literary quiz in The Guardian contains a Brontë reference:

8. Which 19th-century literary character responds thus to the accidental extinguishing of her candle? “Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not a remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath. Darkness impenetrable and immoveable filled the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.”

1. Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
2. Catherine Bennet in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
3. Catherine Hayes in William Makepeace Thackeray's Catherine, A Story
4. Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

The Brontë Sisters posts about Emily Brontë's funeral. Discover what an Eyress is on mikkipedia's Twitter.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Wuthering Heights

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Betty, the Werewolves and Heathcliff

The latest album by Betty and the Werevolves, Tea Time Favourites, contains a song inspired by Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The track number 9 is Heathcliff:

  9. Heathcliff

Betty And The Werewolves are Laura McMahon on Vox/Guitar, Helen Short on Guitar/ Vox/Keyboards, Emily Bennet on Bass/vox and Doug McFarlane on drums. Formed in 2007 and are three girls and one boy from London and Cambridge who whoop and howl through the night as their sweetly sung melodies collide with glitter-struck punk guitars. Taking inspiration from luminary lycanthropes Virginia Woolf and Grandma Wolf, they sing ditties about falling in love with David Cassidy and strange encounters on night buses, shouting all the while and scuffing up their party shoes

Página 12 (Argentina) confirms the band's tribute to Emily Brontë's novel:

El toque demencial fue buscado: “Queríamos que el álbum sonara como una reunión de té con una tía loca que sirve tacitas de gin en su porcelana más adorable mientras la rodean gatos, libros, tortas... Ella es Betty”, definió la banda para un medio brit. No sin antes aclarar que sus lyrics están influenciados por literatos de la talla de Emily Brontë (de hecho, una de las canciones se llama “Heathcliff”...), John Keats o T.S. Eliot. (Guadalupe Treibel) (Microsoft translation)

Categories: Music, Wuthering Heights

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Christmas 1847, Jane Eyre 2011 and other (timeless) news

Speaking of the Brontës' Christmas (see yesterday's post), the Yorkshire Evening Post has had the good idea of taking a look at 'at what made the headlines at Christmas in the years when four seminal literary works were published: A Christmas Carol (1843), Charlotte Brontë's Jayne [sic] Eyre (1847), T S Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) and J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954)'. Here's what made into the newspaper for Christmas in the year that Jane Eyre was published:

Jayne [sic] Eyre (1847)
December 24: The Leeds Mercury published a poem on its front page, which started: "Farewell to the year, which will soon disappear, May the next with success be attended, Through the universe wide may Dame Fortune preside, And commerce and trade be extended."
There were numerous adverts for circuses, ink, almanacs, coffee houses, tea, Ford's pectoral balsam (to ward off colds), shoe sales, stationers, Wesleyan missions and one by Acme of Fashion, Boar Lane, Leeds, which began: "What is hair? Hair is a lightly organised substance requiring for its production a delicate apparatus of capillary vessels, nerves, glands and tubes. It is formed from a fluid secreted from the blood..."
There was also a report of a murder trial in which one Patrick Reid forced his way into a Mirfield home and struck a servant girl a violent blow to the head, felling her, then did the same to the woman of the house and then the man, before he was disturbed by a caller at the front door. Having got rid of the caller, he returned and cut the throats of all three victims, before ransacking their drawers and making off. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. (Neil Hudson)

Focus Features has released its 2011 preview package and several sites, such as Collider or Rope of Silicon comment on it, mentioning Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre (March 11, 2011)
Synopsis: Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland”) and Michael Fassbender (“Inglourious Basterds”) star in the romantic drama based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, from acclaimed director Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”). In the story, Jane Eyre flees Thornfield House, the vast and isolated estate where she works as a governess for Adèle, a child under the custody of Thornfield’s brooding master, Edward Rochester. As Jane looks back upon the tumultuous events that led to her escape, from her childhood as an orphan to her education at the cruel charity school to which she was consigned, she realizes that she must return to Thornfield – to secure her own future, and to come to terms with the terrible secret Rochester had hoped to hide from her forever…
Release Date: March 11, 2011 (select cities)
Director: Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”)
Writers: Moira Buffini (“Tamara Drewe”); Based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Holliday Grainger, Sally Hawkins, Tamzin Merchant, Imogen Poots, Judi Dench
MPAA Rating: PG-13

The preview package seems to include a few pictures as well but none of them new as can be seen on the Rope of Silicon gallery. EDIT: Focus Features also traces a profile of Michael Fassbender mentioning of course his role as Rochester:

In Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Michael Fassbender brings a new twist to the character of Edward Rochester, a figure who remains as enigmatic and unforgettable as he was in 1847 when Charlotte Brontë’s novel was first published. Indeed Fassbender joins a long line of celebrated actors, including Orson Welles and George C. Scott, who’ve put on Rochester’s riding boots in earlier adaptations. As the master of Thornfield, and Jane’s employer, Rochester is a brusque, brooding, but ultimately good man.

Based on the official synopsis of the film, some IMDb members are discussing whether Jane's past might be told in flashbacks.

Incidentally, Forbes reports that Mia Wasikowska is one of their 'stars to watch' in 2011:

Wasikowska's breakthrough year at the box office helped land her as one of our Stars to Watch for 2011. The young star will next appear in a new version of Jane Eyre. (Dorothy Pomerantz)

A reader of The New York Times seems to think that Helen Burns suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder:

To the Editor:
In “Untangling the Myths About Attention Disorder,” Dr. Klass cites actual and fictional instances of what seems to be A.D.H.D. from a time before the condition had a name. Since her examples are both boys, I would like to point to another.
In Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” Jane’s school friend Helen Burns is constantly in trouble, regarded by many of the teachers as a slattern and a “dirty, disagreeable girl.”
In the classroom, when the subject they have been reading about interests her, she pays close attention and understands better than anyone else; but at other times her thoughts “continually rove away.” She starts daydreaming, and when called on can’t answer because she has heard nothing.
“I seldom put, and never keep, things in order,” she tells Jane. “I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method.” Helen (said to be modeled on Charlotte’s sister Maria) seems to be a classic example of the predominantly inattentive type of the disorder more often found in girls. (Deborah Roberts)

BlogHer suggests April Lindner's Jane or Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair as Christmas presents for teenagers:

While classics aren't for everyone there are still lots of people, including teens, who enjoy them. The market for retold classics is booming and Jane by April Lindner updates Brontë's tale by making Jane a college dropout and her employer a rock star on the verge of a comeback. It has all the romance, moodiness and mystery of the original. Angieville had a hard time putting it down.

Reader, I loved this book so much I can't stop thinking about it. I had such a gut feeling about Jane from the first time I heard about it and it really is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world when your first uninformed impressions of a book come true. It was honestly difficult putting this one down at night and then getting through the next day all the way until reading time once more.

While I've never quite understood Mr. Rochester's appeal I do have a fondness for BBC period dramas that stems from my own teens. I've been told that if I saw the BBC's 2006 version of Jane Eyre I'd be better able to understand why Rochester is so swoon-worthy. I'd also be tempted to pair it with another book, Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair and a stuffed dodo or dodo t-shirt, but I have been told I sometimes have an odd sense of humor. (sassymonkey)

The Australian discusses why it's important to know about the Bible when it comes to reading the classics:

Indeed, when studying literature, children now in Australian faith-based schools (about 32 per cent of total enrolments, and much higher in senior secondary) enjoy a significant advantage over their state-school peers. Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Dickens, Brontë (both), George Eliot, Hopkins, Hardy, T.S.Eliot, Steinbeck, Beckett, Yeats, Plath, Golding, Attwood and many, many others, require more than a passing knowledge of the Abrahamic Old and New Testaments. (David Hastie)

Of course that's true to some extent but many readers from different cultures approach the classics with a very limited - if at all - knowledge of the Bible and enjoy the epxerience. It's obviously not the same, but that's when a good annotated edition comes in very handy. And anyway very few people today - even those with a Christian background - could compete in Bible knowledge with, say, the Brontës (not just 'both', but all of them).

Galleycat interviews Kody Keplinger, author of The Duff:

Q: What connection does your book share with the two classics you mention in your book, The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights?
A: Well, when I was writing The Duff I was taking an advanced English course at my high school, and we read The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights. I’d read both before, but it had been a few years. Rereading them, I realized what parallels Bianca had with both Hester (The Scarlet Letter) and Catherine (Wuthering Heights). I always had a weird habit of comparing my life to literature I was reading, so I figured Bianca might do the same. With Hester, Bianca sees herself – her unhappiness with the world around her, her need to escape (which is Bianca’s interpretation of the book). With Wuthering Heights, Bianca mostly just sees how not everyone in the book, or in her life, is perfect and how choices can impact those around you. I don’t want to say more than that because it’s a spoiler – but I loved working two of my favorite books into Bianca’s life. (Maryann Yin)

The Arts Desk has also woven Wuthering Heights into a piece of writing, albeit not quite so literary: Strictly Come Dancing: The Final.

Kara on the other hand (this season’s weeping mess of a winner) played things wisely, offering up not one but two separate character journeys. First off, the dancing; unspectacular initially before moving to the dramatic and technical heights of a professional, albeit with sufficient setbacks of injury and illness to keep things interesting. Then (in case that wasn’t enough) the carefully calibrated romance with her brooding Russian partner. With actual romance coyly deferred until “once the show has finished”, the affair was (is?) the perfectly orchestrated exercise in narrative tension, deferring gratification and fulfilment until the last possible second, and finding a plausible enough reason (professionalism, naturally) for this cruel postponement of young love. Wuthering Heights it ain’t, but certainly a good enough substitute for a Saturday night. (Alexandra Coghlan)

The Anti-Room reviews the stage production of Jane Eyre at The Gate Theatre (Dublin). YouTube user natator9 has uploaded a video including the words of Emily Brontë's Remembrance. And Flickr user Mike Riversdale shows how page 16 of an edition of Wuthering Heights looks like on Google Books.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Victorian Era, Wuthering Heights

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