Quirky Yorkshire indeed

Juliet Barker discusses her home - now for sale - and the Brontës with the Yorkshire Post. It's an interesting article even if they start by claiming she's a 'Brontë photographer'.

It was here she settled down to research and write her best-known book – the definitive and wonderfully-readable biography The Brontës, which was highly acclaimed and won The Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award.
It is a myth-busting blockbuster and the first updated edition is just out, with new nuggets on the world’s most famous literary sisters, their brother, Branwell, and father Patrick. The book, first published in 1994, stems from her own childhood in Bradford, where her father was a wool merchant. She became obsessed with the Brontës and read Mrs Gaskell’s biography on Charlotte Brontë when she was 13.
When she landed a job as curator and director of the parsonage museum, in Haworth, it allowed her to delve deeper into the reality of a story that had been heavily romanticised and fictionalised by everyone from Charlotte’s friend, Mrs Gaskell, to film makers and fans.
“What surprised me most was that they didn’t live in some backward village cut off from society. I spent two years reading local newspapers of the time and they showed clearly that the place described by Mrs Gaskell was quite different to the real Haworth. It was a busy, industrial township with its own subscription library and lots going on,” says Juliet, who is most proud of rescuing Branwell’s reputation. [...]
“He was the leader, the innovator. Where he led, his sisters followed. What I also found was that what was supposed to be the most shameful event in his life never actually happened. He was supposed to have won a place at the Royal Academy, where he spent money on drink and drugs and was sent home to Haworth in disgrace. In fact, he never went there at all. Manuscripts show that his tutor felt he wasn’t quite ready for the academy.”
Her latest version of the book includes new material on Charlotte. “She really struggled to be a writer and an independent woman, but I upset people by taking away her pedestal. She is painted as someone who sacrificed everything to look after her sick father and that’s not strictly true. She was a dutiful daughter, but she was much more complex than that. She used him as a convenient excuse not to go to London or to avoid events she didn’t want to attend.”
“It will soon be just the two of us and this is a big house. It’s time to go and although I will miss it, I’m still going to have a moor to look at, which I’m pleased about. That’s very important to me.” (Sharon Dale)

We are not leaving Yorkshire just yet as TNT Magazine has an article on 'quirky Yorkshire' and highlights Brontë country:

In the opposite direction to Beverley is the brooding, romantic countryside of Brontë Country, with its lonely moors taken straight from the pages of Wuthering Heights.
At its heart is Haworth, the rolling village where sisters Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë once lived.
Haworth has been painstakingly maintained to look as it did when the literary icons lived in the area 
– “granny” bikes lean against old-fashioned shop windows, cats dawdle across traffic-free cobbled lanes. You could be forgiven for thinking you’ve 
gatecrashed a 
Hovis advert.
It’s the final proof that it’s anything but grim up north in Yorkshire.

And The Telegraph and Argus features local writer Sanjida O’Connell whose first novel, Sugar Island, seems to have more Brontë influences than meet the eye.

Subconsciously, Sanjida O’Connell may have named the heroine of Sugar Island after the famous Brontë sibling whose masterpiece, set against the backdrop of her beloved Haworth landscape, inspired her as she strolled the moors while growing up in Ilkley.
“I really loved the moors and used to go for long walks by myself and I really loved the Brontes. Wuthering Heights is my favourite book,” says Sanjida.
Sanjida’s character, glamorous actress Emily Harris, arrives in America in 1859 to perform with her father. (Sally Clifford)

Another Brontë-influenced writer is Danielle Dutton, who last week read from her 2007 book Attempts at a Life at an event described by The Maine Campus:

Dutton read a short excerpt from each of her works, beginning with “Attempts at a Life,” a collection of short prose pieces that highlight the hyper-observational.
This trend segued nicely into her next piece, a re-evaluation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” Written after she completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, Dutton took a second glance at her favorite childhood book.
Surprised to see Jane as a completely different character than how she remembered, she was inspired to write an alternate version of the story. (John Shannon)

BCLocalNews remarks on Patrick Brontë's modern approach to education:

It was a time when women could not attend universities. Could not receive a higher education. Some, like the Brontë sisters, had enlightened fathers who educated their daughters in the “higher” learning areas, like the sciences and literature. (Esther Darlington)

ScribbleManiac posts about a recent trip to Scarborough to see Anne's grave. And Les Soeurs Brontë continues discussing in French and in depth the so-called Brontë portrait unearthed by James Gorin von Grozny. Adventures Through the Western Canon posts briefly about Jane Eyre.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Biography, Books, Brontëana, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Patrick Brontë, Wuthering Heights