Unorthodox Luddites

Anne Haddad is anxious to see Wuthering Heights 2011 at the Maryland Film Festival. As read on Urban1te:

The two films I am most anxiously anticipating at the Maryland Film Festival this year: John Waters’s presentation of Wanda, a rarely screened film by the late Barbara Loden, will let out in time for me to still see the unorthodox version of Wuthering Heights by British director Andrea Arnold.
Friends who saw Arnold’s film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September have been raving about it, making me a little jealous, in fact, especially when I was beginning to wonder if it would ever come to Baltimore. I consoled myself with the fact that I have had the privilege of seeing Arnold’s unforgettable earlier film, Red Road. So yes, Wuthering Heights has been adapted for film over and over, but the trailer confirms that this is the one that will make you ache for the characters.

Undine has just seen it at the San Francisco Film Festival and is enthusiatic about it. Some Belgian newspapers and websites review also the film:  Humo (lukewarm), Cinenews, Le Vif, Knack, cinenews (all positive), moustique (very negative).

News.com.au announces that the annual 101 best books Dymocks (an Australian bookstore chain) list has been released. It contains a couple of Brontës and a Fforde:

7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
28. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Curiously Charlottte and Emily Brontë are both mentioned in an informal survey about the most read books in Minsk, Belarus as seen on ТУТ БАЙ МЕДИА.

The Somerset Guardian reports that as part of the new initiative of the Bath Film Festival, the Bath Film Festival Community Cinema, Jane Eyre 2011 will be screened in Peasedown St John (Somerset):

On Saturday, there will be a screening of Jane Eyre at the Beacon Hall, Peasedown St John.
This powerful re-make of an old classic, will be shown, at 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm).

Incidentally, the first anniversary of the Powerstuck Community Cinema was celebrated with the screening of Cary Fukunaga's film as published in the Bridport News. Unikosmos (Germany) gives away copies of the DVD (and books and the soundtrack), deadline: May 27.

Blake Morrison talks about the upcoming British Library exhibition Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands (May 11-September 25) in The Guardian:

Chaucer's Canterbury, Emily Brontë's moors, Graham Greene's Brighton, Kureishi's suburbia … The British Library's new exhibition explores how literature has responded to the varying landscapes of these islands. (...)
Not all writers are as nimbyist as Wordsworth. The Brontë sisters bought shares in the railways (Branwell even worked on them)[.] (...)
Hardy's Wessex is an essential part of the literary tourist trail, along with the Brontës' Haworth, Bram Stoker's Whitby, Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh, Dylan Thomas's Laugharne, and platform 9¾ at JK Rowling's King's Cross.

Imelda Marsden publishes on the Dewsbury Reporter a letter about the recent Luddite bicentenary:

On Sunday, the Red House Museum at Gomersal, held a commemoration of the bicentenary of the Luddite uprising in the district. It was very informative and well presented.
The Mikron theatre company acted out in costume as Luddites and Lord Byron, who was against some of the Luddites being hanged in York in 1813. They also sang in a superb performance.
Then in the lower barn a chap dressed as a local militia volunteer demonstrated firearms of the era.
The lower barn was also about the Brontës. Charlotte’s novel Shirley was about the Luddites, making facts into fiction. It’s also interesting to note that the name Shirley was a boys’ name – after her novel it became a girls’ name. Frank Peel, one of the founders of the Brontë Society, started the Heckmondwike Herald newspaper and from items in the paper he wrote about the Luddites.
He printed a book The Rising of the Luddites which is a very informative book. During the Luddite riots some of the Luddite families where starving and a poor relief collection was set up. The Rev Patrick Brontë donated one guinea which was a lot of money in those days.
History now seems to be repeating itself with today’s recession and food banks being set up .

The Anniston Star publishes a combined review of Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, or, at least, that’s what I was raised to believe, having grown up in 21st century America. In 19th century England, however, famously timid Anne Brontë seemed to draw somewhat less attention than her more outspoken elder sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Though all three siblings eventually won a place among the most brilliant literary minds of their generation, fewer people appear to notice Anne’s novels these days than they do “Wuthering Heights” or “Jane Eyre.” In a clear effort to rectify this injustice, Random House has republished “Agnes Grey” and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” in a deluxe one-volume edition as part of the Everyman’s Library collection.
In this back-to-back format, “Agnes Grey” appears first, telling the story of a 19-year-old English governess in the 1820s who placidly endures the social hardships of working for an aristocratic family. Many readers, upon perusing this brief first-person narrative, will notice similarities between Anne and Charlotte Brontës’ semi-autobiographical depictions of life as a governess. (...)
Anne’s characteristically serious agenda appears again in “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” in which a young English widow seeks seclusion in the countryside after suffering, for years, her late husband’s unfaithfulness and drunken debauchery. (...)
Though Anne has often been regarded as the “quiet” sister or, more shockingly, the least-talented Brontë, she more than matches her siblings’ portrayals of domestic life in terms of impeccable accuracy and unquestionable conviction. From a 19th century novel of sentiment, one could ask for nothing more, and from a Brontë, one would expect nothing less. (Lance Hicks)

QMI Agency reviews Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy:

Scottish-born novelist Margot Livesey takes some risks in transferring Charlotte Brontë's much-loved classic, Jane Eyre, into the 20th century.
But she needn't have worried (if, indeed, she did) as her new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, stands on its own as a story steeped in atmosphere, adventure and romance.
The delight in reading Livesey's appealing novel is to dovetail the emotions and experiences of feisty heroine Gemma Hardy with those of Brontë's 19th century protagonist, Jane Eyre; both resilient young women, both downtrodden and cruelly treated but able, still, to flourish.
In a clever sleight-of-hand Livesey meshes the two tales, updating the Brontë novel's gothic overtones to engage a modern audience. (...)
In true Brontë fashion, Gemma Hardy finds herself at the imposing Blackbird Hall, in the Orkney Islands, hired to take charge of Nell, an unruly eight-year-old, niece of Mr. Hugh Sinclair, lord of the manor and, of course, handsome and mysterious, a Mr. Rochester for the 1960's.
Here, Livesey's tale falters, if only slightly.
Mr. Sinclair, although attractive, is not Edward Rochester as Charlotte Brontë imagined him; curt, glowering, controlling, yet emotionally vulnerable. (Nancy Schiefer)

The Guardian reviews Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Being a review by John Mullan a Brontë reference is compulsory:

Many first-person narratives simply speak to us, the readers, without having to account for doing so. Some, like Gilead, we seem to overhear or intercept. It is not meant for us. A novel such as Jane Eyre or Great Expectations offers no explanation for its own existence, but some narratives do provide their own reasons for being.

More turbine trouble in Brontë country as published in The Telegraph & Argus:

Campaigners fighting plans for a wind farm on Thornton Moor have raised further concerns after an application was put forward for another turbine in Brontë Country.
Keelham Farm Shop in Brighouse Denholme Road has submitted a planning application to Bradford Council for a 34.5m-high 50kw turbine in grazing land near to its farm buildings. (Hannah Baker)

Libération (France) talks about Jeannete Winterson:

Il y avait six livres chez les Winterson. Une Bible et deux commentaires de la Bible, cela fait déjà la moitié. S’ajoutent un exemplaire illustré du Morte d’Arthur de Thomas Malory et Jane Eyre, que M^me Winterson lisait à sa fille adoptive en changeant la fin (exit le vieil aveugle, Jane finit avec St. John Rivers, le pasteur de l’histoire)  (Thomas Stélandre) (Translation)

Jane Eyre is so universal that even an article about mental health in an Azerbaijan newspaper (Zerkalo) makes a reference to the novel:

Услышав "человек, страдающий психическим расстройством", многие сразу же подумают - "псих" и постараются держаться от такого подальше на всякий пожарный. К людям, страдающим психическими расстройствами, в нашем обществе относятся с опаской, а иногда - и откровенным страхом. Воображение так и рисует картину человека в смирительной рубашке, ведь без оной он может нанести вред себе и окружающим. В памяти всплывает одна из героинь знаменитого романа Шарлотты Бронте "Джен Эйр", которая умудрилась спалить весь дом, как только контроль над ней был чуть-чуть ослаблен. (Е.Малахова) (Translation)

Keighley News publishes the highlights of the Contemporary Arts Programme at the Brontë Parsonage Museum;  April Lindner (author of Jane) is thrilled now that she has received an ARC of her next book Catherine (due to appear in January 2013);  many French websites comment on the Wuthering Heights (Kate Bush version) performance of the singer Al.Hy on the TF1 programme The Voice; El cuchitril de Manu (in Spanish) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; Flocon des Livres (in French) has read an abridged version of the novel; Life through rose-tinted glasses reviews Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights; The Obsessive Book Worm posts about the Jane Eyre character.