From drizzle and mist to storms and gales, thunder and lightning to sunshine and rain

The Telegraph & Argus publishes an article about Rebecca Chesney's weather-related project about the Brontës:

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë all used detailed descriptions of the weather around their moorland home at Haworth to emphasise the dramatic and emotive aspects of their novels.
Last October, Rebecca Chesney set up a solar powered, digital weather station at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth to collect weather-related data such as rainfall, wind speed, air pressure and temperature.
While doing that, she also started a residency at the Parsonage, reading letters and novels by the Brontës and researching historical weather records to try and cross-reference similarities and differences with the present day weather readings.
To complement the scientific data being collected, there are also local volunteers noting down weather comments everyday for the duration of the year.
The sum of the scientific data and personal reflections is intended for an archive of weather information specific to the Haworth and Thornton area.
Using the weather station records and her time at the Parsonage, Chesney has developed a series of drawings on graph paper that parallel specific quotes from Brontë writings, on display at Thornton’s South Square Gallery this summer. (July 11 to 29)
With the use of handwritten historical weather records from the 1800s, Chesney has also developed a series of screen prints relating weather patterns to key dates during the Brontë sister’s lives and deaths.
Each image is an over-layered mass of data, unreadable in its intensity and suggestive of the severe and devastating impact that weather had on the Brontë’s health.
From drizzle and mist to storms and gales, thunder and lightning to sunshine and rain, the Brontë sisters’ novels reference the same changing weather conditions that continue today. (Jim Greenhalf)

The Observer reviews  Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale:

When I was at university in the late 80s, the influence of The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's milestone feminist study of the Victorian imagination, could be felt in every corner of the department of English: liberating breeze or poisonous miasma, depending on your point of view. As a result, our studies were onerous. It wasn't enough to read Jane Eyre, Villette and Middlemarch. Beside them on your desk would be a teetering stack of books about Victorian attitudes to sex and science, to marriage and mesmerism, to geology and phrenology and the female malady – plus a pile of minor novels, too.  (Rachel Cooke)

The Guardian also publishes a podcast featuring the British Library exhibition Writing Britain curators, Jamie Andrews and Tanya Kirk:

In this week's podcast, we explore the relationship between landscape and literature in the UK. The British Library's Writing Britain exhibition opens today, and we take a tour round the books and artworks with curators Jamie Andrews and Tanya Kirk, moving from the moors of the Brontës to JG Ballard's suburbia.  (Presented by Sarah Crown and produced by Tim Maby)

Aslo in The Guardian, John Sutherland talks about rain in literature:

What's the glummest opening in English fiction? "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day … the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question." Jane Eyre, of course.

The Ilkey Gazette discusses the results of the National Short Story Week in Bradford:

A retired teacher from Ilkley has won a Bradford libraries-run fiction com-petition held to celebrate National Short Story Week.
David Stokes’ story, Good Dog Josie And Mr John, has now been published in an anthology which is avail-able to borrow from libraries across the district.
David also received a bag of goodies including books and free tickets to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Los Angeles Review of Books reviews Terese Svoboda's Bohemian Girl:

Bohemian Girl, Svoboda's latest novel, seems at first glance to fall into one of two distinct categories. In the most basic sense, the book is a picaresque: one character's journey translated into a series of encounters with disparate individuals. But it also resembles, for lack of a better phrase, the novel as response. (Is there a proper term for the literary equivalent of the answer song: the likes of Wide Sargasso Sea and Jack Maggs?)  (Tobias Carroll)

The Goole-Hawden Courier reviews a local production of LipService's Withering Looks:

Withering Looks is an up-close-and-personal look behind the forbidding exterior of Haworth Parsonage, where the three Brontë sisters (well, two of them actually, Anne’s just popped out for a cup of sugar) lived and worked.
They attempt to answer such gritty and scholarly questions such as who is the Brontës’ mysterious neighbour Mr Moorcock, of Ravaged Heath House, and what does the maniacal laughter coming from his attic mean? Do unfulfilled souls really wander over the wild and heather-clad moors? And, of course, who should Cathy marry, Heathcliff or David Niven? (...)
Switching roles at such high speed allows for some intentionally tight squeezes, quite literally, while the use of suitably cheesy props is slapstick heaven. And the several inevitable delivery lapses threatened to cause several toilet dysfunctions among the more elderly in the audience!
The purists may be offended, but this is Lip Service at its best.

Styleite talks about Mia Wasikowska's Miu Miu campaign:

We’re sure the actress enjoyed playing dress up for the label – after all, Jane Eyre never ventured far from her preferred palette of drab grays and Alice in Wonderland stuck faithfully to her familiar blue dress.  (Hilary George-Parkin)

The Hartford Courant tells a story connected to mother's day with a Brontë reference:

I called her "my Jane Eyre,'' because of her adventurous (not by choice) childhood and I often wondered how in the world she ever became such a wonderful mother. "It was because she watched [our] Mother," my sister Sandra said.

The model Carolyn Murphy chooses her favourite things for The Telegraph:

Book Wuthering Heights or The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  (Sophie De Rosee)

The Times interviews the actress Chloë Sevigny:

"I went to see Jane Eyre, the Mia Wasikowska one, recently. It was so beautiful — a little boring, but so beautiful. I would die to be in something like that.” (Benji Wilson)

L'étrange bibliothèque de Calenwen (in French) and ﾘﾙの不思議の国 post about Jane Eyre;  germangreeneyedmonster reviews Jane Eyre 2011; The Artist Who Never Starved is delighted to have found a copy of the Fritz Eichenberg illustrated Jane Eyre edition; ezridek uploads a video to YouTube with a public reading of Emily Brontë's Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee.

Finally, we present an always-welcome initiative. Cipria e Merletti (in Italian) organize on their blog, the Brontës' Weeks (7 to 20 May):

In questo ambizioso progetto, che come noto dal titolo del presente post si chiamerà "The Brontë's Weeks" o nella versione italiana "Le Settimane delle Sorelle Brontë", abbiamo deciso di coinvolgere altre blogger e ve ne daremo notizia nel corso delle due settimane. Possiamo anticiparvi che un buon numero di coloro che sono state contattate hanno deciso di partecipare e dare così il loro contributo attivo all'iniziativa. Ciò ci rende davvero orgogliose e siamo certe che apporteranno un notevole arricchimento al progetto sotto forma di post interessanti, originali ed istruttivi. 

Siamo entrambe molto emozionate per questa nuova avventura e vi possiamo assicurare che abbiamo messo mente e cuore in quanto abbiamo preparato (e stiamo continuando a preparare) per queste due settimane.

Check posts on  Romancing Miss Brontë or Agnes Grey; La Sofitta di Camilla joins in with a post on Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë.