An entry from Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights was voted the most romantic line, when Catherine declares her love for Heathcliff: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” (Michael Pickard from Express)The poll was commissioned by Warner Home Video to mark the DVD release of the romantic comedy "Going the Distance". The 20 per cent of the 2000 respondents chose the Wuthering Heights line.
With a season that spans the years between the sinking of the Titanic and the beginning of World War I, Downton grounds the changes of pre-World War I England (the arrival of the telephone, servants leaving to become secretaries) in a story that relies on historical perspective, something that has long eluded even western literature's greatest writers. Dickens covered poverty and social injustice, and Brontë covered love and morality, but neither could have known what was ahead. The writers of Downton Abbey do. They know that while modern audiences may not relate to the strict social divisions of Edwardian England, they can relate to a maid's desire to improve her situation by becoming a secretary or a woman's desire to be free of the obligation of marriage for survival. (Nicole Cohen)We beg to differ in the usual thing: Brontë (which one is meant?) covered more than love and morality.
Does Downton Abbey occasionally veer into romance-novel kitsch? Absolutely. But part of what makes the series so irresistible is that it indulges so many period-piece fantasies of transgression. It’s the stuff we daydreamed about while reading Jane Eyre back in high school—if not what was actually on the pages. (Meredith Blake)Las vacaciones de Holden (in Spanish) writes about Wuthering Heights. Two Years(?) in Old Blighty tells - with pictures - about a recent walk in Brontë country. Finally, ScribbleManiac finds out that even Castle Howard is not without a Brontë connection of its own.
'Wuthering Heights' (originally from Kate Bush) covered by Claire Joseph on piano.2. The Brazilian soprano Vânia Mello:
Recorded on January 2011.
Video credits : SoHappyTeam
Vânia Mello em Wuthering Heights, composição de Kate Bush sobre a obra intitulada no Brasil "O morro dos Ventos Uivantes" de Emily Brontë.
Gypsy Dance from Wuthering HeightsCategories: Music, Opera, Wuthering Heights
Composed in Tokyo, November 2010 and performed by Frédéric Chaslin, this is the piano solo version of the original orchestra dance for the opera "Wuthering Heights" by F. Chaslin on the libretto by P.H Fisher, recorded in New York, Jan 2011
The Boston Globe reviews How to Write a Sentence. And How to Read One by Stanley Fish:His one howler is his complete misreading of the final line of “Wuthering Heights.’’ Having eloquently described the limitations of the dull narrator of “The Good Soldier,’’ he misses the conventional stupidity of Lockwood, the wrong-headed narrator of Brontë’s unearthly love story. (Barbara Fisher)The actual comment by Stanley Fish is this one:
The relationship between peace and death is what Mr. Lockwood thinks about in the last sentence of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) as he stands above the graves of Heathcliff and Catherine, who are finally at rest after lives of drama, turmoil and pain:The Sunday Herald remembers the article about Charlotte Brontë that Dickens never wrote:
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.The four verbs that describe Lockwood's posture - "lingered", "watched", "listened", "wondered" - have the effect of stilling action and presenting a mental state that is without perturbation or movement. No straight-line motion of either body or mind, just a gentle musing that that mirrors the gentle fluctuations of nature - the fluttering moths, the soft winds that breathe rather than blow, the grass that is slightly ruffled but not really disturbed, all under a calm ("benign") sky. When the sentence finally moves forward with the report of what Lockwood is wondering, it names for a second everything it has excluded -unquietness- but its point is that, at least in this moment, unquietness will not even be imagined for those who, after a lifetime of agitation, slumber. "[S]leepers in that quiet earth" puts the seal on the cessation of activity, and presents us with a sense of resolution that feels like a benediction.
On the one hand he felt it pandered to the prurient. People, he reckoned, ought not to be interested in writers’ private lives and should content themselves with the books they produce. Offered an essay on Charlotte Brontë for one of the magazines he edited, he summarily rejected it. However, around the same time, as his latest biographer Claire Tomalin points out, Dickens had appointed his friend John Forster to write his biography. (Alan Taylor)The Lancaster Sunday News interview Matthew Sternberg, director of the OperaLancaster's production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" by Gian Carlo Menotti at Fulton Opera House who recommends a favourite of BrontëBlog's:
The best book I've read lately: "Sloane Hall" by Libby Sternberg. This is blatant self-promotion, because my wife wrote it, but it's a great book! It's a retelling of "Jane Eyre" set in Hollywood in 1929, just as the movie industry switches from silent pictures to sound. (Paula Wolf)The Guardian reviews the reissue of South Riding by Winifred Holtby (now that it is a new BBC drama):
At first there are inevitable comparisons to be made with Jane Eyre, but this would be too easy for Holtby, and she steers things towards a different place, one altogether more poignant and stubbornly grounded in the real. Though her prose is pedestrian in places, there is a bleak, brave quality to her writing, and certain passages are desperately wrenching. (Natasha Tripney)The Times reviews Faulks of Fiction by Sebastian Faulks (while the controversy about his article about Jane Eyre still lingers). It seems that his opinion about Wuthering Heights is no better than about Jane Eyre:
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is a magnificent thunderstorm of passion, but reduces the rest of the novel to matchwood. (John Carey)Gorąca czekolada z cynamonem (in Polish), Delightful Eccentric, BooksareExcellent (on YouTube) and The new adventures of old Mandy review Wuthering Heights in Polish; Better Living Through Beowulf posts about Emily Brontë's poem No Coward Soul is Mine; The Squeee watched the Skins episode with the Brontë tattoo; The Ramblings of Two Readers talks about Jane Eyre 2006. Haunting Serenade and The Lurking Librarian take a look at several adaptations of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre respectively.
This isn't exactly a Brontë-related book but it had a pretty obvious Brontë twist:We Ain't the BrontësThe Jackson Sun interviews the author who says:
Rosalyn McMillan
# Publisher: Urban Books; 1 edition (January 25, 2011)
# ISBN-10: 1601622430
# ISBN-13: 978-1601622433
Charity Lavender Evans is a national bestselling author, but she has not achieved the success of her sister, Lynzee Lavender, whose science fiction books reached New York Times bestselling status. No matter how hard Charity tries, she is unable to get her contract renewed. It's been seven years.
Lynzee drops a bomb on Charity and tells her that Charity's husband, Jett, is the father of the daughter she bore thirty-three years ago and gave up for adoption. Unwilling to believe her, Charity hires a private detective. When it is revealed to her that the reason for her career stalling is that Lynzee had her blacklisted, Charity is appalled. She contacts Lynzee, who denies it and then puts pressure on Charity to tell Jett the truth about his daughter. Charity is in total denial.
Without a contract renewal, Charity and Jett are forced to sell their dream home. She and her husband take jobs to make ends meet, but she continues to write. Her hard work pays off, and she gets a new contract. Revelations, which becomes a New York Times bestseller, exposes a part of Lynzee's past that she's embarrassed about. As her own career and book sales plummet, she files a five million dollar civil suit against Charity.
Jett eventually finds out about his daughter. He is furious at Charity for lying to him, and files for a divorce. Trying to define her life as a wife, mother, sister, and writer will cause Charity to make some drastic changes that will eventually make her a stronger woman, but Charity's problems are not over. Someone is playing nasty tricks on her. She fears for her life. Jett and Charity debate if it's his ex-lover or Lynzee who is trying to hurt her. Everyone is shocked to discover the person's true identity.
With her first new book in 10 years, McMillan took inspiration from another famous pair of sister writers — Emily and Charlotte Brontë.Categories: Books
"This is about two sisters who write books," she said. "Two of my favorite books were 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre.' This was a story that I felt again hadn't been told about two authors. ... Love conquers all is the message. No matter how much sibling rivalry there is, love trumps anything that might be negative in your relationship." (Tracie Simer)
AT a packed meeting at Roberttown Church on Friday, residents listened with growing dismay to the latest proposals for the Local Development Framework. This involves developing industry on green belt land in the Three Nuns area.We are no Luddites at BrontëBlog but as much as we think that progress has to go on we also think that if there are, it seems, not-so-aggressive alternatives in regards to the landscape and the historical heritage, they should be taken into consideration even if they are, in the short term, more costly. We are sure that in the long term it would be worthwhile.
This has been wrongly described as the Cooper Bridge development as part of the strategic development of Huddersfield, not North Kirklees. The area would cover over 50 acres, (bigger than the whole of Oakwell Hall Country Park) and stretch from Cooper Bridge to within 500 metres of Hartshead and Roberttown. It is estimated to attract 3,000 workers.
Apart from the fact that the A62 is not capable of sustaining such a development, it’s obvious to anyone with a sense of history and a love of the environment that the area should be protected, not destroyed. (...)
The site is adjacent to a listed monument, the Dumb Steeple and the listed former Roe Head School on the other – attended by the Brontë sisters and where Charlotte was later a teacher. (...)
It is crossed by the Kirklees Way and the Bronte Way, provides a ‘green lung for the people of Spen and safeguards the rural setting of Hartshead and Roberttown.
It is a special place of pilgrimage for those interested in Luddite History and the Brontës. It is the countryside depicted in Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Shirley, and her description of the view overlooking this beautiful valley slope would be covered by ugly buildings. (...)
I would also urge people to write to the council at Local.development@kirklees.gov.uk and to attend the meeting at Cleckheaton town hall on February 1 at 7pm to discover the plans for the rest of North Kirklees. The deadline has been extended for comments, but only by one week, to February 13.
But there are some heroines, feminist or otherwise, from whom, however impressive, you wouldn’t want to take make-up tips. Jane Eyre, for example. Or Dorothy Parker, despite the rapier wit. And what about Frida Kahlo? (Sarah Vine)The Scotsman reviews the performances of the play The Breathing House by Peter Arnott at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow:
What his production does achieve, though, is an old-fashioned but impressive sense of narrative movement and energy, particularly well captured in a powerful performance from Toni Frutin as the wonderful Hannah; and as it thunders towards a conclusion worthy of Charlotte Brontë, this fine curiosity of a modern Scottish play seems well worth reviving, not once, but many times. (Joyce MacMillan)The Globe and Mail makes a very curious use of a Brontë reference in connection to Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper:
He emphasized how proud and happy he is to be leading a team, striking a contrast with the image of Stephen Harper that even his own party seems determined to project – to them, at best, Mr. Harper is mid-novel Heathcliff. (Tabatha Southey)The Vancouver Sun reviews the latest novel by Alice Hoffman, The Red Garden and mentions her previous and very Brontë-influenced novel Here on Earth:
Her novel Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Brontë's masterpiece Wuthering Heights, and her novel Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. (Tracy Sherlock)The Ilkley Gazette celebrates the placing of a blue plaque in Menston honouring Lassie's creator Eric Knight:
"I hope the plaque will also help boost tourism and place Menston deservedly on the literary map. Americans flock to see the Brontë house, not knowing that the dog they grew up with from 600 TV episodes had her beginnings but a few miles down the road.”(Jim Jack quoting Greg Christie, biographer of the author)The Louisville Courier-Journal announces the Louisville performances of Polly Teale's Brontë:
The story of the short, troubles lives of the Brontë sisters. Presented by Finnigan Productions.Mrs. Hill's Book Blog interviews author Jennifer Trafton:
What about now? Who are your favorite authors now?Another Brontëite is the Spanish author Mariano Antolín Rato who is interviewed by La Nueva España (Spain):
I love Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, W.B. Yeats, Billy Collins . . . . I like Lewis Carroll even better now than when I was a kid. Some all-time favorite “adult” novels include Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
A partir de eso empezaron a interesarme tanto Joyce como los aledaños, y después me salieron los Beat, y descubrí a Faulkner, al que traduje, y la Generación Perdida, que es mi favorita. Después estuve una temporada colgadísimo de la literatura inglesa del XIX. Si me preguntan por la novela que más me gusta digo que es "Cumbres borrascosas", que es probablemente el libro que más veces he leído en mi vida. (J. Morán) (Microsoft translation)Expresso (Portugal) republishes (from the Brazilian magazine Atual) a review of the novel A Outra by Maria Teresa Pereira
No princípio, vemos como Miss Jessel se predispõe a desempenhar o papel principal, semelhante ao das heroínas dos romances que lia às escondidas do pai ("Jane Eyre" e "O Monte dos Vendavais", com esse Heathcliff capaz de lhe tirar o sono). (José Mário Silva) (Microsoft translation)Antonio Muñoz Molina is the author of an excellent article in El País (Spain) about the Morgan Library exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives. It begins with Charlotte Brontë's Roe Head Journal:
A la luz de una vela Charlotte Brontë escribe con una letra minúscula en una hoja no mayor que la palma de una mano, una noche de tormenta, y para aprovechar más el papel la letra se va haciendo más diminuta todavía a medida que escribe y llena hasta el filo mismo de la hoja. Es noche cerrada, aunque sólo son las siete. Quizás ve su reflejo en el cristal de la ventana que sacude el viento. Es febrero de 1836, Brontë tiene 19 años y ha empezado a trabajar como maestra en un colegio que es un caserón helado en medio de un páramo. Está agotada después de una jornada de trabajo de doce horas, entre gente ajena y hostil, que le despierta una añoranza infinita de su casa familiar y de sus padres y hermanos. Los rasgos de la escritura son veloces y quebrados: casi podríamos escuchar el roce continuo y entrecortado de la punta de la pluma, que moja de vez en cuando en el tintero. El acto de escribir le parece "un refugio que nadie conoce en esta casa salvo yo misma". El cuarto, la luz de la vela, la soledad, la escritura, le hacen sentirse en un arca que flota sobre las aguas de un mundo tan ajeno a ella como si lo hubiera anegado un diluvio universal.Clarín (Argentina) has a somewhat sexist comment about how women or men see themselves:
Pero no sólo escribe por las noches, cuando se encuentra a solas en su cuarto, antes de acostarse. En un aula helada, a primera hora de la mañana, con toda la pesadumbre del comienzo del día gris y de la jornada que le queda por delante, abre un libro de texto y toma un lápiz y quizás mientras los estudiantes hacen algún ejercicio ella escribe con el lápiz en el reverso de una página en blanco, la letra más pequeña todavía, casi como de un mensaje cifrado, y cuenta que no hay fuego en el aula y que está muerta de frío: ese momento me llega intacto como una sensación física cuando miro el viejo libro escolar con tapas de cartón muy gastadas en una vitrina de la Morgan Library y reconozco esa letra, y en ella esa voz tan precozmente llena de literatura y de ambición de vivir. En el interior de las vitrinas, en esta mañana en la que hace en la calle un frío como el que debió de sentir Charlotte Brontë, en las vitrinas de la Morgan Library hay cuadernos abiertos, páginas manuscritas, líneas de tinta o de lápiz desvaídas por el paso de siglos: pero hay sobre todo momentos en el tiempo, fechas exactas recién escritas al comienzo de páginas todavía en blanco, incisiones de vidas igual de visibles que una pisada en la superficie de la Luna. (Microsoft translation)
Nunca nos contamos algo que hemos vivido como si se tratara de un documental. Siempre tenemos inclinación por la literatura popular, novelas de aventuras, policiales y románticas. Los hombres nos vemos como héroes de western o películas de Bruce Willis. Las mujeres, quizá como heroínas de películas románticas o novelas de las hermanas Brontë. (Pablo de Santis) (Microsoft translation)Il Giornale or Il Nord (Italy) announce that Riccardo Nencini's book about Oriana Fallaci, Morirò in Piedi, will be adapted to the screen. It's a good time to remind us of the origins of the title:
Offri caffè e panini dalla finestra della casa del suo medico, dove eravamo quel giorno, alla mia scorta (Nencini è stato più volte minacciato per la sua attività politica, ndr) e mi suggerì tra le righe anche il titolo del libro: Emily Brontë, mi disse, morì sbucciando patate, io invece morirò in piedi». (Tommy Cappellini) (Microsoft translation)Il Sole (Italy) carries an article about how literary canons change with time:
Molte opere capitali della letteratura hanno in comune la capitale indifferenza che – fuor di cenacolo – le accolse al momento della loro prima uscita. Cime tempestose, La metamorfosi, La coscienza di Zeno, Dalla parte di Swann... (Nicola Lagioia) (Microsoft translation)Independent (Poland) reviews a Hurts concert in Warsaw:
Po drugiej - "Silver lining"- Theo Hutchcraft rzucił do publiczności trzy białe róże. Zapachniało przez chwilę wczesnymi Depeszami, poetyką z dzieła Emily Brontë, a trochę jak z "Pikniku pod wiszącą skałą"... Wszystko to razem jakoś pasowało do siebie. (Kinowska Joanna) (Microsoft translation)SudOuest (France) reviews the exhibition Parodies, la bande dessinée au second degré at the Cité internationale de la BD et de l'image (Angoulême). The main guest is Robert Sikoryak and his Crypt of Brontë parody is mentioned.
Philomusica ChoraleMore information can be read in Montgomery News:
will perform “Sacred Service”
Christ’s Lutheran Church,
700 Pennsylvania Ave.,
Oreland, PA 19075,
Saturday, Jan. 29, 8 p.m.
Sunday, Jan. 30, 4 p.m.
“I wanted it to have a universal spiritual appeal, not just a Christian faith only,” she said. “Because I didn't want it to be strictly Christian, the whole piece starts with a Navajo prayer.”
From the Navajo prayer, the piece continues to incorporate a wide variety of literature, ranging from the works of Catholic saints to Muslim poets, a Sufi poet to British writer Emily Brontë.
In order to get the perfect sound and literary selections to achieve the universal appeal she was aiming for, Weiand took the better part of a year to compose “Sacred Service.” (Thomas Celona)
2. Alert reader Emanuela informed us about a programme on the Italian television which will feature Jane Eyre. It's a competition between two schools answering questions about a novel they both have read. Jane Eyre is the subject of the next programme:January 30 18.00The programme will be available to be watched here. More information in La Voce di Mancuria
Rai 3 - Per un Pugno di Libri
Jane Eyre
Di Charlotte Brontë
Scuole sfidanti:
Liceo classico “Francesco De Sanctis” di Manduria
Liceo classico “Niccolo’ Machiavelli” di Pioltello
There were poems from English writer Emily Brontë whose work spanned Romantic and Victorian literary ages (Sananda Sahoo)And this is Fanhouse adding a poetic touch to a recent Minor League Baseball match:
And it looks like a true winner when you factor in the way Garcia and the White Sox seem to be drawn together as inexorably as Heathcliff and Catherine on the moors in "Wuthering Heights." (Josh Alper)
EDIT: An alert for today, January 28 on BBC2:Antiques Road Trip Series 2EDIT (29 January): Here you can see the Brontë-related fragment.
Episode 20
Antiques experts James Braxton and Thomas Plant face the final day of their North East jaunt. They travel from Keighley to Leeds in search of profitable antiques to sell at auction in Driffield, East Yorkshire. James inspects some Islamic artefacts in Bradford, whilst Thomas becomes a fan of the Brontë sisters. Will James and Thomas actually make some money at their final auction?
Series Producer Paul Tucker. Narrator Tim Wonnacott
Presenter James Braxton and Thomas Plant
Executive Producer Wendy Rattray
Fri 28 Jan 2011, 17:15
Complete information about the exhibition, including an audio guide, readings, the curator's blog, etc can be found here.The Morgan Library & Museum Presents Major Exhibition Documenting the Practice of Diary Keeping by Writers, Artists, and Other Celebrated FiguresShow Includes Examples of Journals Kept by Henry David Thoreau, Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë, John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, Bob Dylan, and Many Others.
In an Age of Blogs and Social Media, the Exhibition Explores the Motivations Behind the Enduring Drive by Individuals to Record Their Thoughts and Actions.
The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives Opens January 21, 2011
Concerning Charlotte Brontë's manuscripts on exhibition, you can listen to the audio guide stop or discover the tiniest of details in Charlotte Brontë's handwriting:A Dark and Stormy Night: Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855). Fed up with teaching young girls their lessons, future novelist Charlotte Brontë began a diary entry that grew into a fictional fantasy.Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Charlotte Brontë
About the Diary
Charlotte Brontë's first job did not suit her fiery sensibility. At nineteen, with little heart for marriage and the need to earn a living, she began teaching at Roe Head School in the north of England, about twenty miles from her home in Haworth. She found the atmosphere stultifying and the pupils idiotic. Forced to maintain an outward semblance of professional grace, she concealed her considerable emotional energy and rage. One evening in February 1836, "after a day's weary wandering," she began a diary entry on a loose sheet of paper: "Well here I am at Roe-Head," she wrote, "it is seven o'clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night."
During this rare moment alone, Brontë confessed her feelings of alienation. "It is strange," she wrote, "I cannot get used to the ongoings that surround me. I fulfil my duties strictly & well," but "as God was not in the wind, nor the fire, nor the earth-quake, so neither is my heart in the task, the theme or the exercises." Over the course of her teenage years, Brontë had found a creative way to get through such uncomfortable moments. She had learned to listen to what she called the "still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide"—an imaginative voice that granted her escape and release. "It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings," she wrote in this diary entry, "all my energies which are not merely mechanical, &, like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere."
Brontë recalled how the previous night's "stormy blast . . . whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy." While the others were at tea, she said, she approached an exotic palace in the kingdom of Angria, peered through the windows at a lushly appointed room, and observed a drunken man shamelessly stretched out on the queen's voluptuous ottoman. But this, of course, was pure invention. Having begun writing a straightforward diary entry—a real-time description of her life at Roe Head—Brontë had stepped seamlessly into fiction. She allowed her high-flown storytelling to provide an antidote to the dreary everyday, her diary serving as a gateway from the real world into the fantastical.
Ten years before she wrote this entry, Charlotte's brother Branwell had received a set of toy soldiers as a gift from their father. He and his sisters—Charlotte, Anne, and Emily—were delighted, and they did what children do: They named the soldiers and made up stories about them. But the stunningly imaginative Brontës took typical childhood play to a new level, spinning a complex series of interconnected tales in exotic settings, documenting their creations in tiny handmade books written in a minuscule script appropriate to the scale of their soldier-characters. Charlotte's and Branwell's invented world was called Angria, and it was to this kingdom (and this script) that she returned that evening in 1836 when took a much-needed break from her schoolroom duties.
This is one of several diary entries that Charlotte Brontë made during her three years teaching at Roe Head School. She folded the single sheet of paper to form four pages, each a bit smaller than a 5 x 7 inch photograph, and filled the space with nearly two thousand words. She packed explosive imagination into this miniature canvas, depicting herself as the breathless observer of the debauch of Quashia Quamina, one of the characters she and Branwell had created: "I watched the fluttering of his white shirt ruffles starting through the more than half-unbuttoned waistcoat." She emerged from the erotic reverie of the diary-story only when Miss Wooler—one of the schoolmistresses—appeared at the door with a plate of butter in her hand. "'A very stormy night my dear!' said she. 'It is ma'am,' said I."
Our university should be a less confusing place than it was less than two weeks ago. We taught Orwell’s “1984” with a flesh-and-blood Big Brother outside the doors. Budding novelists coded their feelings in imitation Brontë novels. (Edward Sklepowich)Also The New York Times features Dong Mingzhu, 'one of the toughest businesswomen in China', but the journalist makes a statement that clearly clashes with Ms Mingzhu's personality.
She is a fan of romantic novels like “Jane Eyre” and “Gone with the Wind.” (Didi Kirsten Tatlow)The journalist should have known better than to reduce Jane Eyre (or Gone with the Wind for that matter) to a mere romantic novel in view of the rest of the article.
In 1999, I was in the minority who admired Gordon's far darker "Jane Eyre," directed by John Caird and Scott Schwartz (on a more elaborate set of turntables) and beautifully sung with Marla Schaffel in the title role at La Jolla Playhouse. (Anne Marie Welsh)And still about music, albeit quite a different type, SoundBlab says the following about Anna Calvi's debut album:
Her evident love of Kate Bush's ornate work of leftfield pop genius, 'Wuthering Heights' also proves a recurring touchstone. (Rich Morris)
A couple of news outlets - The Mirror, On the Box - comment on tonight's Skins episode and remark on the Charlotte Brontë tattoo.The record features songwriting collaborations with a couple of other outspoken female singers, Nikka Costa and Skin from Skunk Anansie, and a clutch of cover versions, including a faithfully high-pitched take on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights.A column writer for the Manila Standard Today recalls her mother's collection of classics, which included works by the Brontë sisters. Our Books Are Better Than We Are discusses Jane Eyre. Tinta Nocturna (available both in English and Spanish) has interviewed writer Elle Jasper:
8. What has been the writer and history that have influenced your current style? Why?I like the old writers--Bram Stoker, Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley. They have definitely influenced my current style. (Alan D.D.)And writer Syrie James writes on her blog about star-crossed lovers and how the subject has shaped her latest novel, Nocturne.
Star-crossed love—the idea of two people falling hopelessly, desperately in love against seemingly insurmountable odds—is one of the most popular, thrilling, and heartrending themes in literature and film. Think Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliff, Buffy and Angel. Maybe that’s why I felt so compelled to write about Michael and Nicole, the star-crossed lovers in my new novel, Nocturne, who spend four magical days together and are both utterly transformed by the experience.Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Wuthering Heights
Finnigan Productions Presents the Southeast Premiere of the play Brontë by Polly Teale.Categories: Theatre
Finnigan Productions presents the Southeast Premiere of the stage play Brontë by Polly Teale, running January 28, 29, February 4 & 5 at 7:30pm at The Rudyard Kipling, located at 422 W. Oak Street in Old Louisville. Brontë is the first play in Finnigan’s seventh season in Louisville.
Novelists. Recluses. Spinsters. The short, troubled lives of the Brontë sisters have become one of the great literary myths of all time. How is it possible that three women who had never been kissed, had never traveled and were virtually unschooled write some of the most passionate literature of all time? Living among the desolate Yorkshire moors with their drug addicted brother and distant father; Charlotte, Emily and Anne invented scores of gruesome, violent stories. Many of which remain bestsellers today.
Brontë examines how three women who lived in an era when females weren't permitted to enter a library could have authored some of the most passionate and popular fiction of all time. Brontë explores the private lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne in a unique and intriguing way. It is an intermingling of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. It is a startling portrayal and a sharp and sexy take on a talented but cursed family.
Brontë was developed by UK playwright, Polly Teale. Ms. Teale is the Joint Artistic Director of Shared Experience Theatre Company, which originally premiered Brontë in 2005. Her other credits include the play adaptation of Jane Eyre, and the original plays After Mrs. Rochester, Fallen, Now You See Me and What is Seized.
Brontë is directed by Louisville native and Finnigan company member Natalie Fields. Principally an actress, Natalie is an honors graduate from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and The Moscow Art Theatre. Her directing credits include: The Seagull, August Strindberg’s The Stronger, A Midsummer Nights Dream, How I Learned to Drive and Counting the Ways by Edward Albee. Natalie has also studied with the SITI Company and with Tadashi Suzuki.
The cast of Brontë includes George R. Bailey, Abby Braune, Elizabeth Cox, Sarah East, Natalie Fields, Joe Hatfield and Eric Welch.
Jane Eyre is a heroine; Becky Sharp, the main character of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-48), is a hero. No one seems to question the distinction: it’s obvious. Rather harder is to say quite why. In the end, I think, it’s a question of independence.On Salon, Laura Miller thinks that Faulks has got 'Brontë's creation tragically wrong' and retaliates with an in-depth analysis very much worth reading:
Jane Eyre is a resilient woman, of higher moral calibre than Becky Sharp, but her happiness, and her psychological “completion”, seem to depend on her securing the love and companionship of another, Mr Rochester. All her battles from the orphanage onwards, with whatever doughty and feminist intelligence they are fought, are presented as leading to this one end.
Becky can’t be a heroine because she is not a “good” enough person; while Jane Eyre’s fine qualities see her through against the world, Becky is too much of that world. Her resourcefulness and skill at dealing with it, however, qualify her first for our interest, then for our backing and finally for something like heroic status.
For a great novel, "Jane Eyre" has endured more than its fair share of misguided, condescending misinterpretations, but none quite so extravagant as an essay published in the British newspaper the Telegraph last week by novelist Sebastian Faulks. "Jane Eyre is a heroine," he announces in the opening sentence, while "Becky Sharp, the main character of Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair' (1847-48), is a hero." Furthermore, "No one seems to question the distinction: it's obvious."MobyLives has also picked up on the controversy and praises, and agrees with, Laura Miller's article, as do we.
In explaining this curious formulation, Faulks acknowledges Jane's "resilience" and "moral calibre" but qualifies this praise by claiming that "her happiness, and her psychological 'completion,' seem to depend on her securing the love and companionship of another, Mr Rochester." This need, he maintains, is incompatible with heroism. [...]
The belief that Charlotte Brontë's novel is in essence a romance, with Jane's marriage to Rochester serving as her character's "completion," is certainly a common one. One reason for this error is that "Jane Eyre" is one of the key inspirational texts for an entire genre of fiction, the romance novel, in which the marriage of heroine to hero is the primary purpose of the narrative. But "Jane Eyre," despite its fictional legacy, is not a romance novel.
The pivotal moment in "Jane Eyre" is not the one in which the Byronic Mr. Rochester professes his love for the "poor, obscure, plain and little" governess and asks her to marry him. Rather, that moment comes after Jane learns that she can't wed the man she loves because he is already married (to a madwoman, whose existence he has concealed from her). Rochester attempts to keep Jane by suggesting they run away to France together, but she refuses. She flees his house and, without family or other protectors, the penniless young woman is soon reduced to beggary, grateful to eat scraps originally intended for pigs.
This episode is only one of a series -- including the chapters devoted to Jane's childhood amid unloving relatives, her years in a harsh boarding school, and the weeks when, having been rescued by a family of a devout Calvinists, she contemplates life without Rochester -- that describe not Jane's quest for love but her assertion of her autonomy in a world that regards her as entitled to none. In the past, Jane rebelled against authority figures to defend the legitimacy of her feelings, but when she leaves Rochester, it is her own desires that she defies, this time on behalf of her principles.
It's often difficult for modern readers to grasp the importance of Jane's resolve because our moral code has shifted. We might, for example, regard it as a greater evil to abandon true love than to violate a marriage as empty as Rochester's. But Jane believes to her core that what Rochester proposes to her is wrong (also, that it will ultimately damage his respect for her), and even if we can't necessarily agree with that, this is what matters in the context of Brontë's novel.
What modern readers are also prone to miss is that Jane sacrifices not only her heart's desire, but also, for all she knows, her life. A woman of her class, without family, money or wealthy friends, had few ways of making a living besides governessing (an option lost to her without references) or prostitution (which, even if Jane would have considered it, was itself merely a drawn-out death sentence), especially in the pre-industrial English countryside. Within days Jane has begun to starve. Though the Rivers family saves her, she has no reason to expect or even hope for that salvation. (Read more)
(Also, Meg Manning says "Weathering Heights" instead of "Wuthering Heights" and I wouldn't hold it against her except one of her apparent baby-sitting accomplishments was making Aria turn off The O.C. to read it. Which: Dumb. Even Emily Brontë had no idea who was narrating that tale, and the first two seasons of The O.C. were some damn fine storytelling.) (Heather Hogan)On the contrary, and widely agreed by those who know what they are talking about, Emily Brontë was splendidly in command of it all. But then again, if you conside The O.C. better than Emily Brontë, there's hardly anything else that can be said.
Every Sunday night on BBC Radio 3, Drama On 3 has a mixture of new plays commissioned for radio, radio productions of stage plays, adaptations from fiction and stage transfers, highlights this year include a new adaptation of Emily Brontë's haunting Wuthering Heights.Jonathan Holloway is the author of the new adaptation.
I can empathize with Deidre Gover and the other mothers, fathers, spouses and other relatives and friends of slain British soldiers who say they are untouched by Blair’s concession of regret – presumably intended for their ears most of all. Their “obdurate perversity”, to use Emily Brontë’s words, is probably one of bereavement’s most enduring features. (Junior Campbell)The words com from chapter XXXII of Wuthering Heights.
The Hidden Places of Yorkshire.The Telegraph & Argus reviews the book and adds:
Includes the dales, Moors and Coast
ISBN: 9781904434955
Published: October 2010
Author: David Gerrard
First published in 1990, this is the 10th edition of the Hidden Places of Yorkshire which has an attractive new cover of the ruins of Whitby Abbey and redesigned page layouts. Editorially, the new style has continued Travel Publishing’s commitment to exploring the more interesting, unusual or unique places of interest in Yorkshire. In this respect we would like to thank the Tourist Information Centres in Yorkshire for helping us update the editorial content of the book.
As the title implies, this guide - a book to be read as well as used - is dedicated to promoting the more secluded and little known places of interest that are easy to miss unless you know exactly where you are going.
The county of Yorkshire is full of scenic, historical and cultural diversity. In the northwest are the picturesque Dales with its varied scenery of peat moorland, green pastureland and scattered woods intersected by the numerous brooks, streams and rivers. To the northeast are the imposing Yorkshire Moors, the rich agricultural Vale of York, the chalky hills of the Wolds and the dramatic storm-tossed coastline. In the south are the industrial and commercial cities and towns, which have made such a major contribution to our industrial and cultural heritage. This handy-sized book is an invaluable guide to those wishing to explore the historic county of Yorkshire.
The York and County Press described the previous edition "as covering every corner of the county, promising new discoveries and snippets of information for even the best travelled of Yorkshire folk."
Specific places of interest, including Bolling Hall and Haworth’s Brontë Parsonage, are featured in a chapter at the end of the guide providing details of historic houses, museums and gardens, as well as pubs, teashops, cafes, restaurants and places to stay. (Emma Clayton)Categories: Books, Haworth
Ann Dinsdale, Brontë Parsonage Museum’s collections manager, said: “It’s a fascinating archive which includes the preliminary script – it means you can see how the screen play evolved and changed when the film was in the making.The Vancouver Sun summarises the forthcoming new adaptation of Jane Eyre as follows:
“For anybody studying or researching film and interested in how scripts are adapted and how a film evolves, it will be extremely interesting.” (Clive White)
Jane Eyre: Lonely governess serves wealthy but distant master. Romance ensues. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender star. (March 11, limited) (Jay Stone)And the Jamaica Observer highlights the particular point of local interest in this film:
Jane EyreBuddy TV picks the following as one of the best things to have happened in the TV series Big Love this week (episode "A Seat at the Table"):
A film adaptation of the popular British novel written by Charlotte Brontë. Literature students should take notice of this film as the Caribbean novel Wide Sargasso acts as a prequel to Jane Eyre. (Dominic Bell)
5) Barb gives Nicki's daughter Cara Lynn a copy of Jane Eyre -- calling it "my favorite novel." Barb -- that's my favorite novel, too! Who knew? (And just in case you missed the parallels, it's about a young woman struggling to find happiness in world that's often aligned against her.) (Alison Stern-Dunyak)And the Coronation Street Blog looks back on 2010 and reminisces about the episodes that took place in Brontë Country.
Favorite Author(s), fiction or non-fiction:Unfair question! How can you chose a best friend after a lifetime of friendships? Here's a very, very brief list in no particular order: Patrick White, Bertolt Brecht, Emily Brontë, Balzac, David McCullough, James McBride, Isaac Asimov, bellhooks, James Joyce, Malcolm Gladwell, Cormak McCarthy, Shakespeare, Doris Lessing,Virginia Woolf, Kenneth Graham, Knut Hamsun, Gunter Grass, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Friedman...the list goes on....The Sun Sentinel's Talk Back South Florida comments on Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and adds that what America needs are 'tiger kids'.
Perhaps China needs Tiger Moms -- enforcers of rigorous discipline reminiscent of "Jane Eyre's" orphanage childhood. They may be the ones mercilessly preparing their children to excel and endow China with power and prosperity. (Rachel Patron)Saran kirjat writes in Finnish about The Professor.
EDIT: Also on the Brontë Parsonage Blog and Keighley News.Brontë Parsonage Reopens In February
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth will be re-opening on Tuesday 1 February following a hectic month of activity including maintenance work, cleaning, conservation, revaluation of the museum’s collections, decorative archaeology and development of new displays.
The museum closes every January so that essential work can be carried out without disturbing visitors. As well as all of the usual tasks undertaken, this year included a team of experts visiting the museum to carry out decorative analysis which it is hoped will provide new evidence of the scheme of decoration in the Parsonage during the Brontës’ residence. The work involves taking samples from walls, mouldings and woodwork and analyzing these using polarizing microscopy. It is the first time that such analysis has taken place at the Parsonage and, it is hoped, could lead to exciting new discoveries about the Brontës’ décor and the history of their Parsonage home. Information relating to the project will be made available to visitors and the museum will be formulating a plan to completely redecorate the Parsonage in 2012.
Visitors to the museum will also be able to see a variety of new displays, with more of the museum’s collection on display than ever. Items on display for the first time will include the original screenplay for the 1943 Hollywood film of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. The screenplay is annotated by its author, the British writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley is famous for books such as Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, in which he wrote of his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. The screenplay, produced in the war years, is stamped, ‘’Less shooting over here means more shooting over there! Save our film!”. It was acquired by the museum last year, with assistance from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the museum will be screening the film at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth on the evening of Friday 18 February. The Brontës will be continuing to feature in the world of the movies with new film versions of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights expected to be released in 2011.
A great deal of work goes on at the museum in January and we’re very much looking forward to re-opening our doors in February. There have been lots of changes to our displays and we hope that visitors from near and far will come along and see what’s new.
Andrew McCarthy
Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum
Who is your favourite fictional character? Jane Eyre. Or Kezia in several Katherine Mansfield short stories.The Yorkshire Post has an article on Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding and its new TV adaptation (to be broadcast by the BBC). This is the plot in a nutshell according to the journalist:
At first glance, South Riding is a Wolds update of Jane Eyre. It shows a young woman falling for a charismatic landowner whose wife has been consigned to a mental hospital.Liverpool Vital Football, on an article on women and football (or sports in general), remarks:
Either involvement in sport was seen as unladylike (you don't find it mentioned in any Austins [sic], Brontës or Gaskells) so had to be done quietly, or there just wasn't the opportunity for it as ' 'er indoors' stayed exactly there. Doesn't mean it didn't happen though. (Naoise)You know, because the Brontës' novels were oh-so-ladylike. Actually the critics didn't mind Heathcliff killing a puppy so much but they would have had a fit had a sport been mentioned!
Jane Eyre, The Well Dressed Governess2. In Crown Point, Indiana:
The Antiques Circle, Cleckheaton
Tel. Dorothy Thomson (01924) 274137
January 25
The celebrated author Charlotte Brontë was an intelligent woman of passionate intensity. Another, cast in the same mould, was her most famous fictional heroine, Jane Eyre. This is their story, told through the clothes they both wore.
Costume historian Gillian Stapleton recreates Jane’s charity-school uniform, her ‘best’ silver grey gown, and her ill-fated wedding dress, linking her extraordinary ‘autobiography’ with Charlotte Brontë’s own life history.
Book group3. In Woodbrige, Virginia:
The self-titled Third Monday at 1 book group will meet at 1 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Crown Point Community Library, 214 S. Court St. This is a date change due to the library being closed on Jan. 17 for Martin Luther King Jr. day. The group will discuss "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. New members are welcome. (North West Indiana Times)
Random Reads Book Club – Wuthering HeightsCategories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
Prince William Public Library
Monday, January 24, 1 p.m.
Told through flashbacks recorded in a diary, Wuthering Heights tells the story of Heathcliff and Cathy and their unresolved passion which eventually destroys them and so many around them. This classic of English literature is the only novel written by Emily Brontë.
You are welcome to bring your lunch. No registration required.
Juliet Barker can see wild moorland and open countryside from almost every mullioned window of the 100-year-old former vicarage in the Yorkshire Pennines that has been her home for more than two decades. Not surprising, then, that the historian and biographer — her definitive The Brontës sold more than 70,000 copies shares a talent for predicting the weather with Charlotte, the eldest sister of the prodigious literary family, who lived just 12 miles away in the village of Haworth. Charlotte’s first biographer and friend, Elizabeth Gaskell, noted: “I was struck by Miss Brontë’s careful examination of the shape of the clouds and the signs of the heavens, in which she read, as from a book, what the coming weather would be.” The Brontës were hugely affected by the landscape, so it ties me to them like an umbilical cord. (...)The Wichita Falls Times Record reviews a local production of Mary Chase's play Harvey and mentions this anecdote:
“We had only seen a rather unprepossessing picture of the house,” she says. “When we turned off the main road, it was like heading into the land time had forgotten, and the house was fantastic.” It was built in 1901 by Helen Strickland, the only daughter of a wealthy mill owner with with the wonderful name of Hinchliffe Hinchliffe, in his memory. A plaque on the end wall of the property, built using stone from one of her father’s burnt-out mills, records his name. “Everything is so Brontë-esque, and Hinchliffe is such a Heathcliff name — yet it’s away from Haworth, with all the tourists ,” says the Yorkshire-born Barker.
The daughter of a Bradford wool merchant, she was “obsessed with the Brontës as a child”, and later beat other Brontëphiles to the job of librarian and curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, at the house in Haworth that Charlotte, Anne, Branwell and Emily shared with their father, Patrick, a vicar. Barker and James, a company director, settled in their own former church property. The six-bedroom family home is, says Barker, “large but very adaptable". She charted the lives of the Brontës from a first-floor study overlooking the church and rolling countryside. When her daughter, Sophie, was born, it became a bedroom. Next, she researched and wrote the life of the equally weather-obsessed Lakeland poet William Wordsworth, followed by Henry V, from a second-floor attic with views of bleak Yorkshire moorland. Her dedication prompted her son, Edward, then eight — he is now 25, and a lieutenant in the Royal Dragoon Guards — to write a school essay entitled, “the mad woman in the attic”. (...)
Now the couple have decided it is time to downsize and are leaving the Pennines for a home in the Yorkshire Dales, one with open views.“I love living in Yorkshire,” Barker says. “I like the anonymity — it’s something the Brontës appreciated. Charlotte enjoyed being lionised in London, but liked being anonymous in Haworth.” She also has no illusions about her status locally. “We were once approached by the churchwarden hosting the annual fête,” she recalls. “He said they were looking for someone famous to open it — I thought for a moment they were going to ask me. But instead they chose the local damp-proofing and dry-rot expert.” (Lynne Greenwood)
The Old Vicarage is for sale at £1.1m with Charnock Bates.
Opening night Friday ran smoothly except for some minor infractions, like Jane Austen becoming Jane Eyre in one line and an actor entering the stage a little too early. And the show is long. (Lana Sweteen-Shutts)Also in The Sunday Times, a review of Everything and Nothing by Araminta Hall:
The nanny has a special place in fiction. From Jane Eyre and Mary Poppins to The Nanny Diaries, novelists have used her as a device to point out the inadequacies of parents. Jane Eyre rescues Adèle from Mr Rochester’s neglect (...) (Daisy Goodwin)The Sunday Times also carries an article about Albert Niland:
Described by the broadcaster and musician Tom Dunne as “a major new talent”, thanks in large part to his flamenco-tinged version of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, Albert Niland has yet to achieve the widespread recognition his talent and experience merits. (Mel Clark)TFTS- Technology, Gadgets & Curiosities talks about the new black in fighting games: crossovers.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Tekken x Street Fighter just aren’t enough crossovers for Capcom. And while I’m certain they won’t be happy until they eventually make Capcom vs Wuthering Heights, they’ve decided to start with Nintendo, since they’re kind of close. (Catalin Alexandru)Panama City News Herald remembers one of the blackest moments of recent American History:
This year will mark the 25th anniversary of a controversy that put Bay County in headlines across the country and around the world. It started in 1986 with some books in a middle school teacher’s classroom library that a parent thought contained inappropriate content, and it continued in 1987 with the schools superintendent listing more than 60 books and plays to remove from student access. (Tony Simmons)Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was one of the "dirty sixty".
Another recent release of an audiobook adaptation of Jane Eyre (abridged):Jane EyreListen to a sample or the whole reading (on Spotify).
Author : Charlotte Bronte
Publisher : Saland Publishing / The Classics Collection
Narrator : Deborah Carr
Release Date : 18-May-2010
Audio Time : 50 min.
ATV Network provides some details about the new season of Skins which premieres next Thursday, January 27. It seems that Kaya Scodelario's role as Cathy in Wuthering Heights 2011 is not the only connection of the series with the Brontës. In the first episode of the fifth season, Franky, Charlotte Brontë is mentioned quite explicitly:Also, the English teacher was satisfyingly eccentric. He demonstrates what could be described as a controversial teaching style, opening up his shirt to reveal a tattoo of Charlotte Brontë’s face on his chest and exclaiming: "This is the original punk, Charlotte f**king Brontë!" (Sandra Wagg)Picture Source: E4.
The variety is dizzying. The diaries are written in bound volumes (like Sir Walter Scott’s) or relegated to a scratch pad (like an account of the 9/11 attacks by Steven Mona, a New York City police lieutenant). They are energetically scribbled (like Henry David Thoreau’s, written with pencils made by his family’s own company — a packet is on display) or crazily compressed into nearly microscopic print (like the fantastical reaction to a dark and stormy night by a young Charlotte Brontë). All of these are astonishing presentations, confessions, performances — often self-conscious and, perhaps, occasionally honest. (Edward Rothstein)Art Daily has an article about it as well.
Dans la famille Brontë, il y avait Charlotte, la "bonne" fille, celle de Jane Eyre, sage et en parfaite adéquation avec l'ordre moral victorien de l'époque. Dans le sillage de Charlotte, il y avait Anne, la "nonne" qui pensait comme son père, pasteur de son état, qu'un livre doit avant tout offrir une morale exemplaire (cf. Agnes Grey). Et puis il y avait Emily, vierge forte qui imposa à l'Angleterre un autre romantisme, violent, sensuel et dénué de tout bon sentiment dans son chef-d'oeuvre, Wuthering Heights. Enfin, il y avait Brandwell (sic), le frère, le poète maudit que ses soeurs aimaient d'un amour trouble, voire malsain (Heathcliff, c'est lui...). Privés de leur mère morte trop tôt et sous le joug d'un père austère, ils vécurent une enfance rude, à l'image du presbytère glacial qu'ils habitaient. Pour survivre à cette existence grise, il ne restait à ces enfants que leur imagination, forgée par des heures de lectures silencieuses (Lord Byron, Walter Scott). Le monde du dessous, c'est celui-là, un univers romanesque magnétique avec ses langages, ses intrigues et ses décors désolés, inventés par quatre enfants solitaires qui allaient bientôt devenir des génies. (Marine de Tilly) (Microsoft translation)Tom Hooper, director of the film The King's Speech, answers questions from the readers of The Guardian:
I worry that the phrase "costume drama" has a sexist origin - used by male critics as a perjorative term about screen adaptations of mainly female writers : George Elliot, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë. To charge Austen or Elliot as being writers concerned only with the surface - what people are wearing - seems an extraordinary injustice to visionaries of our inner life. It also seems to diminish anything that is set before now, and it would appear to me to be an arrogance of the present to assume that anything set in the past is by default less interesting or more surface than the present.Financial Times interviews journalist Joan Bakewell, DBE:
What was your earliest ambition?The Winnipeg Free Press reviews Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers:
I wanted to live a wild life. I wanted to be Cathy in Wuthering Heights; I wanted to suffer for love. That quickly segued into wanting to be an actress but it soon became clear that I wasn’t good enough. (Hester Lacey)
She can hear the murmurs of madwomen through the walls of her dormitory, as well as the weak cries of infants and orphans. The place is truly ghastly in its muffled expressions of sorrow -- as bad as the mysterious attic in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and just as symbolic of the secrets at an empire's centre. (Dana Medora)Denver Post talks about Thatcher Wine owner of Juniper Books (Boulder):
His bookshelves, set against walls rarely touched by the light flooding the rest of the home, include sets of Jane Austen, the sisters Brontë, Charles Dickens, and the Charles Morris 15-volume set of historic folk tales and fairy tales. The books reflect both his background as a Dartmouth history major and his avocation of collecting rare and valuable books. (Claire Martin)American Consumer News announces the release by Audible.com of an audiobook of Lady of Milkweed Manor, authored by Julie Klassen, narrated by Simon Prebble and described like this:
In the tradition of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, debut author Julie Klassen delivers a compelling Regency Era novel brimming with authentic period details, vibrant characters, and enthralling plot twists.Ñ Magazine (Clarín) remembers Argentinian humourists from the past:
Cuando pienso en las primeras referencias del humor que me llegó, pienso en la gran Niní Marshall, en el programa La cruzada del buen humor, con los cinco grandes: Zelmar Gueñol, Juan Carlos Cambón, Guillermo Rico, Rafael “Pato” Carret y Jorge Luz. Era un humor paródico, de imitaciones. La gracia era oír la voz de, por ejemplo, Narciso Ibáñez Menta, sin saber si era él. Hoy nadie se ríe con eso. Pensemos en Pepe Iglesias. Era un grande, pero hoy nadie le daría bola. Era un humor de repetición. Al menos, eran humoristas que entendían que el oyente era alguien culto. Mencionaban a Víctor Hugo o a Cumbres Borrascosas ; hoy creerían que se trata del relator de fútbol y del nombre de un telo. (Enrique Pinti) (Microsoft translation)Newnotizie (Italy) reviews Jane Borodale's The Book of Fires:
Nelle pagine di Jane Borodale si avverte un pizzico dello stile delle sorelle Brontë: come nei loro romanzi, ne La ragazza del libro dei fuochi emerge la grande capacità della scrittrice di plasmare i rapporti umani nella loro complessità, così come si sviluppano nella vita reale. (Angela Liuzzi) (Microsoft translation)Der Spiegel (Germany) carries two Brontë references. One in an article about the recent anonymous book O: A Presidential Novel, the other a review of Kate Morton's The House at Riverton:
Für "Das geheime Spiel" hat Morton insbesondere die Erinnerungen ans englische Landleben der zwanziger Jahre von Frances Donaldson ("Child of the Twenties") und Beverley Nichols ("The Sweet and Twenties") konsultiert. Als Vorbilder für ihr eigenes Schreiben nennt die 34-Jährige unter anderem Daphne du Maurier und die Brontë-Geschwister. (Nicole Stöcker) (Microsoft translation)Broadway World announces the new season of the Creede Repertory Theatre (Creede, CO) which includes a production of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep; Chicago Now remembers the Katherine Hepburn/Howard Hughes alleged affair when she was playing Jane Eyre in Chicago; Myjane (Russia) uses Heathcliff as an example of neurotic character; Jannas blogg reviews Wuthering Heights in Swedish and Francinete Mateus who loves the book is preparing her upcoming visit to Haworth (in Portuguese); Heart of a Coach's Wife posts about Jane Eyre; Thoughts from the edge reviews Jennifer Vandever's The Brontë Project; the Brontë sisters remembers the figure of the mother of the Brontës, Maria Brontë and Brontës.nl posts about the book project by Jolien Janzing about the Brontës in Brussels.
