The Dark Side of Writers’ Homes

Dave Astor in The Huffington Post shows his Brontë colours:

I give thanks to the books that turn adolescent readers into adult readers. For me, it was one 19th-century novel by a woman, and one 20th-century novel by a man. (...)
But by the time we reach our mid-teens, English teachers up the ante. Two books on their agenda when I was that age included Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath -- both of which made me groan before I cracked their covers. A novel about some oddball governess? A farm family leaving Oklahoma? Bor-r-ring.
Then I read those two books, and my literary landscape was transformed. There was no going back to kid fiction with few nuances and little complexity. Danny Dunn was done.
Though I was a 20th-century American male, I strongly related to the British female protagonist in Brontë's 1847 novel. Jane Eyre somehow transcended time, place, and gender -- like all great literary characters can do. I admired her ethics, intelligence, independence, and self-sufficiency. Plus I was sort of a loner like her, and was from modest economic circumstances like her. (...)
For all the lessons and such in those two books, the Brontë and Steinbeck classics were also darn good reads filled with suspense, pathos, believable dialogue, and flat-out excellent writing. Plus Jane Eyre was and is incredibly romantic.

Pilar Vera in Diario de Cádiz (Spain) also uses Jane Eyre as synonym for the love of books:

Decidida a escapar de su inmundo mundo, la pequeña Jane Eyre -huérfana, inoportuna, marisabidilla-, cogía un libro y se acurrucaba tras gruesas cortinas. La única fuerza, la única salvación, estaba en la lectura. Es cierto que las historias pueden salvar vidas. Por eso amamos tanto a los libros, quienes los amamos: somos conscientes de su valor exacto. (Translation)

The Atlantic talks about being a writer today:

Though it's rare to make a living on writing, it's becoming increasingly easy to call yourself one. Without any money at all, anyone can publish digitally with the click of a button or, for a price, self-publish a print manuscript. The ecology of authorship has changed dramatically since, say March 1845, when Charlotte Brontë was working as a governess, miserable, and wrote in a letter, "I shall soon be 30 and I have done nothing yet." That was two years before Jane Eyre was published. 

 This is Money discusses how houses which have been featured in films are more interesting for buyers:

The latest version of Wuthering Heights, out now, was shot extensively in three locations in the Yorkshire Dales — Thwaite, Muker and Coverham.   (...)
Typically beautiful National Park villages, the first two are dotted with stone cottages, while Coverham is even smaller. All are full of Dales character.
House buyers there are often in search of the Wuthering Heights farmhouse on top of a hill, with ‘views forever’, according to Brian Carlise, of J.R. Hopper.  (Mark Hughes-Morgan)

The Weekly Standard reviews Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Brontë's Grave by Simon Goldhill. A controversial view of the Brontë Parsonage:

But year after year, tens of thousands of tourists visit the five shrines on his tour—the homes-turned-museums of Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, the Brontës, William Shakespeare, and Sigmund Freud—in search of some insight or connection. So if Goldhill starts off skeptical of these pilgrimages, he also has reason to take them seriously. (...)
The Brontë estate in Yorkshire reveals the dark side of writers’ homes, and not just because of all the moors. The Brontë sisters tend to attract hysterical fans—“going to Haworth feels like joining a cult”—and the museum at Haworth Parsonage certainly reflects a certain obsessiveness, which forces Goldhill to confront the voyeurism of his mission. In Charlotte Brontë’s room, her very shoes and stockings are part of the exhibit: “What Victorian woman, let alone the cripplingly shy Charlotte, would want her used underwear on display? It is also Goldhill’s misfortune to have brought as his traveling companion a friend who once saw the original manuscript of Jane Eyre in the British Library. This friend finds nothing at Haworth Parsonage half as moving as beholding the page where Charlotte first set down “Reader, I married him" which leaves Goldhill wondering if the sisters’ intimate belongings have been exposed not only tastelessly but pointlessly. (Helen Rittelmeyer)

In all likelihood Charlotte Brontë wouldn't appreciate her clothes being on display (and Arthur Bell Nicholls certainly wouldn't) but truth be said the Parsonage is highly considerate with what it shows. No real underwear ever (are stockings underwear?) goes on display, even if it exists (see our review of Katrina Naomi's Charlotte Brontë's Corset).

The Sydney Morning Herald mourns the death of the writer Hazel Rowley. She was quite a Brontëite:

Her real drive to biography, it seems, came out of her first reading of Jane Eyre. It fired her imagination, she said: ''I could not read enough about the Brontë sisters and their harsh life in that parsonage.'' (Jane Sullivan)

The Dayton Daily News mentions the pen name of Charlotte Brontë:

Shakespeare’s champions act as if it’s inconceivable that anyone would write under a pseudonym. Tell that to Mary Anne Evans, still known to the world as George Eliot; or to Charlotte Brontë, who originally published as Currer Bell. (Mary McCarty)

Contatto News (Italy) reviews Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter:

In conclusione, credo che questo libro non sia affatto consigliabile, credo che lasci un’onta nel cuore del lettore che non potrà mai evitare di paragonarlo alla bellezza non solo della storia, ma anche stilistica, del capolavoro di Charlotte. Risultati di vendita di questo romanzo possono risultare per l’affetto che ci lega a quella giovane indifesa e forte al contempo, che era la nostra adorata Jane Eyre, quella reale, quella pura della Brontee, e non madre snaturata descritta dalla Newark. (Translation)

Keighley News reports a recent meeting of the Brontë Country Partnership looking for new initiatives to promote tourism in the Brontë country. Sink into a Good Book... reviews Wide Sargasso Sea;  Love, Romance, Passion reviews Sharon Kendrick's The Forbidden Wife; the Brontë Sisters lists some links about Branwell Brontë and Luddenden Foot; lift up the shades, turn off the lights posts about Branwell Brontë;  Nadando en tinta (in Spanish) reviews Wuthering Heights; Melodee Writes, Leopard-Skin-Pill-Box-Hat, The Spider's House, New Empress, Assistant Blog, CineHouse, Alternate Takes and Bad Grammar post about the Wuthering Heights 2011 adaptation; Mia's Musings and Wirtualna Polska and Gazeta Płock (in Polish) posts about Jane Eyre 2011. By the way, several Spanish websites publish the trailer of the film (which reveals far too much of the story, so much that it is not a trailer but a summary). And the German news outlets also publish several articles and reviews: Monsters & Critics, Oberhessische Presse, Net Tribune and Aviva-Berlin. Such a Litwit compares Brontë and Austen.