"I could not read enough about the Brontë sisters and their harsh life in that parsonage"

The Telegraph and Argus has an editorial on local tourism.

Tourism is an important part of the local economy and its role is often underestimated, not least by the people who live in the Bradford district. Because we see the attractions we have every day, it is easy to take them for granted.
But in Bradford itself we have one of the country’s top museums in the National Media Museum, and our theatres like the Alhambra bring people in from all over the North. And we have many attractions right on our doorstep, such as Brontë country and the Yorkshire Dales.

And another article from the same newspaper highlights the Brontë connection at Dewsbury:

He’s known for his opinions on many things, not least motors.
But what some people won’t know about Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is that he hails from a family who qualify to be among ‘Dewsbury Greats’. [...]
A photograph of the TV presenter and writer taken with archive staff at Huddersfield Library in 2004, while he was researching the Kilner family involved in a glassworks in Thornhill, forms part of an exhibition of Dewsbury Greats, one of many informative displays at the recently-refurbished Dewsbury Museum. [...]
Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart, who is from Mirfield, clergyman Patrick Brontë, father of the world-famous literary siblings, and sporting greats Eddie Waring and Eileen Fenton are also recognised in the display as having links to Dewsbury. (Sally Clifford)

Patrick Brontë spent about two years in Dewsbury as a young curate.

A couple of books with Brontë references. Jasper Fforde's latest novel, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, is reviewed by the Winsconsin State Journal.

Fforde peppers each page with literary allusions, pop culture references and inside jokes. Most readers won’t get them all and that’s OK. As Fforde writes about his title character’s whereabouts: “Here in Fiction we have over a quarter of a billion titles. That’s just one island in a BookWorld of two hundred and twenty-eight different and very distinct literary groupings. ... Thursday could be anywhere from the Urdu translation of Wuthering Heights to the guarantee card on a 1965 Sunbeam Mixmaster.” (Rob Merrill)

And Buffalo Rising reviews Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere:

To rival the tortured romances of Wuthering Heights and Like Water for Chocolate, Lennie finds herself magnetically and passionately drawn to Toby, Bailey's boyfriend, at the same time the new boy in a band, Joe Fabulous Fontaine, makes her feel part sky. (Angela Pierpaoli)

The Guardian has an obituary on Hazel Rowley.

My friend the biographer Hazel Rowley, who has died aged 59 after suffering a stroke, wrote intimately about the lives of the novelists Christina Stead and Richard Wright, the French intellectuals Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the presidential couple Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
She was born in London and went to Australia aged eight when her father took a medical professorship at Adelaide University. She attended the university herself, studying French and German. She became fascinated with biography after reading Jane Eyre, later saying that the novel "really fired my imagination ... I could not read enough about the Brontë sisters and their harsh life in that parsonage". (John Trumpbour)

Perhaps we should start a new section called 'Inside the homes of Brontë scholars'? After seeing Juliet Barker's home (now for sale) we now get to pop into Jane Sellars's thanks to the Yorkshire Post.

She loved city living but now prefers village life, which she first got a taste for when she moved to work as the director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. She retains her links, has written books on the Brontes and is still a trustee of the Brontë Society. (Sharon Dale)

Speaking of houses, this is what NorthJersey thinks of 'a multimillion-dollar, tax-exempt East Hill mansion owned by the Libyan government'.

One of those assets is the 4-acre Libyan estate known as Thunder Rock on Englewood's Palisade Avenue, which features a granite 25-room mansion that seems more suited to a Charlotte Brontë novel than an international dispute. (Mike Kelly)

Oregon Music News chats with Stefan Minde, 'the former general director and conductor of Portland Opera (1970-1984) [who] was honored at the Portland Opera Guild’s golden anniversary on March 5th with a lifetime achievement award'. He reminisces,

We did the world premiere of Bernard Hermann’s “Wuthering Heights.” That got a lot of attention from everywhere. (James Bash)

Associated Content has an article on 'Jane Eyre's Journey to Self Discovery' and The Bold Type - a Forbes blog - considers Jane Eyre a 'lustful feminist'. A Room of One's Own is reading Villette.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Opera, Patrick Brontë, References, Wuthering Heights