Wuthering Country-houses

The Yorkshire Post has what sounds like good news for Haworth:

THREE Yorkshire cities have been praised for helping to protect and revitalise historic conservation areas.
Ripon, Sheffield and Bradford are all singled out in a guide published by English Heritage guide for making dramatic improvements to their historic neighbourhoods, providing other areas with a benchmark of success. [...]
Bradford has 5,800 listed buildings and 59 conservation areas, which place huge demands on heritage officials. But Bradford Council introduced a scoring system in 2005 to assess the condition of roofs, chimneys, walls, windows, doors, shop fronts and boundary walls for each pre-1956 building – a valuable tool to guide management of these vulnerable areas.
One conservation area to benefit is Haworth. The Brontë village was put on the Heritage at Risk Register last year due to the erosion of traditional features. But English Heritage has given the council a £15,000 grant to produce a design guide which will include photo-montages illustrating how shop fronts and its cobbles could recover some of the character lost in recent years. (Joanne Ginley)

The Guardian looks into 'The deep foundations of the country-house novel' and mentions Jane Eyre among others:

Of course, in the Gothic tradition the country residence is also characterised by elements we have come to associate with horror: locked rooms, mysterious letters, noises in the night and characters deemed dangerous or insane imprisoned in attics: a tradition which stretches from the Bluebeard legend through Jane Eyre to Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger. (John Lucas)

Collider interviews Holliday Grainger - Diana Rivers in Cary Fukunaga's adaptation - who speaks about her role:

Can you talk about the roles you did in Jane Eyre and Bel Ami, which you also have coming out this year?
GRAINGER: When I was younger, I always wanted to do period drama and never got to do it, until last January. And then, this last year was just period drama after period drama. I have a small part in Jane Eyre. I’m one of the Rivers sisters that saves Jane (Mia Wasikowska) from destitution. They’re a very lovely, very godly, very pure family. Bel Ami is the opposite. (Christina Radish)

The Telegraph India has an article on the Jaipur Literature Festival and reveals that Indian author Mamang Dai is quite a Brontëite:

When asked about her favourite books, Mamang Dai had said that one of them is Wuthering Heights. She loves the scene in which Catherine stands on the heath and cries that if she were to die that moment and the angels came to take her away, they would have a hard time because she would resist them violently. She would rather be in that wilderness forever than in heaven. As my plane touched Calcutta, I was grateful to Dai, and to Emily, for voicing what I had thought but could never express. And I wished that Calcutta would host a literary fest, since it is this city, more than any other, that deserves one. (Anusua Mukherjee)

Africana Online has a Wuthering Heights-related recommendation for the snowy days of February:

Story time: Take the wintry white scenery around you as inspiration to write out your next adventure. You can fill in the blank page with whichever story you choose: pick up some vampire tales a la mode; revisit Wuthering Heights; or pen some stories of your own. (Nicole Basile)

We don't think that this teenager interviewed by Springfield's State Journal-Register will be doing that, though:

What is the worst book you’ve ever read? “Wuthering Heights.” Everyone: You’re wrong. It’s BAD.

In view of that, we consider it a very good thing that there are blogs out there who are organising Brontë read-alongs. February is the month to read and share Wuthering Heights with Read It or Not... Here We Come Book Club and read and share Jane Eyre with Laura's Review Bookshelf. Also posts about Jane Eyre today on The Other Team and Cloudberry. Two Bibliomaniacs include it - and also Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair - among their Top Ten Debut Novels.

Categories: Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Websites, Wuthering Heights