"Surrender, sweet Jane". "I rather prefer mining"

Who could ever imagine that we would miss the good old days of Brontë mash-ups with zombies, vampires... now it's the turn of mummy porn Brontë. And Eve Sinclair's Jane Eyre Laid Bare will not be the only one around.

A publisher of adult fiction is giving literary classics such as Jane Eyre and Pride And Prejudice an erotic makeover.
The company said that it was "100% convinced" that there was a market for the racy versions of the 19th century novels by authors Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen and that the spicing up of the much-loved books will introduce the classics to "a new generation of readers". (LOL)
Other titles to be published under the Clandestine Classics collection include Austen's Northanger Abbey and Arthur Conan Doyle's stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. (...)
Some original fans of Jane Eyre might be unhappy to discover that the female protagonist has "explosive sex with Mr Rochester" in the publisher's erotic edition.
In Wuthering Heights, heroine Catherine Earnshaw "enjoys bondage sessions" with Heathcliff while sleuth Sherlock Holmes has a sexual relationship with his sidekick Dr Watson in the new e-book.
Claire Siemaszkiewicz, founder of Total-E-Bound Publishing, which is releasing the titles from July 30 in digital format, said: "We're not rewriting the classics. We're keeping the original prose and the author's voice. We're not changing any of that.
"But we want to enhance the novels by adding the 'missing' scenes for readers to enjoy.
"People are going to either love it or hate it. But we're 100% convinced that there's a market there.
"We'll be bringing the classics to a new generation of readers as well as to people who love the classics but would like to see what we have done with them."
She added: "I've often wondered whether the Brontë sisters, if they were alive today, would have gone down the erotic romance route. There's a lot of underlying sexual tension in their stories.
"Charlotte Brontë was a bold, forward-thinking lady for her time. There's so much sexual tension and eroticism there."
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The dominating/subservient dynamic of Brontë's novel might even make readers of the "Fifty Shades" series blush. Imagine if mousy governess Jane had told her "master" Mr Rochester exactly what she wanted to do to him? At the novel's close she finds her voice. Here's what might have happened:

“Surrender, sweet Jane.”
“Nay, sir, I cannot; I will not.”
His thick brows furrowed above those eyes. Though the sun had been swallowed by eve, the intent was as clear as a spring brook. Mr Rochester would have me.  Any further protest was swallowed by his lips. I knew I could have turned away; he held my hands—thus my upper body—imprisoned at the small of my back. My head was free.
“Kiss me,” he commanded, moving closer.
At once I saw he meant to kiss me once again. His lips would be relentless and ruthless; and the taste of him—the smokiness of his cigar combined with his uncivilised power—would render me helpless.  (Sherna Noah in The Independent)

The Sun or The Daily Mail have other excerpts from this book with, guess what: fifty shades of bondage...

The Daily Express gives voice to the "co-author" of this ebook, Sierra Cartwright:

Novelist Sierra Cartwright, who transformed Jane Eyre, said: “There are so many joys of working on Jane Eyre to add erotic content.
“The biggest challenge to be sure is in fitting with Jane’s character and ensuring the additions don’t change the beautiful flow of the story.” (Elisa Roche)

And Metro adds, quoting Sierra Cartwright:

‘Jane is multidimensional, brave and committed to her course of action.’ 

The story is pretty much everywhere. For instance in The Times.

Fan fiction is funny when it's fan fiction... if not, it sounds like pure sexploitation under the long shadow of Christian Grey. And we are absolutely unable to discuss the cover with respectable words.

The Independent (South Africa) is concerned with the origin of this whole fever: Fifty Shades of Grey, of course:

In fact, his name is Christian Grey, and, what’s more, he’s cultured. He has always wanted to go to England, he tells Anastasia, because “it’s the home of Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy. I’d like to see the places that inspired those people to write such wonderful books”, he says. (Craig Brown)

The Huffington Post discusses some of the cultural events in London parallel to the Olympic Games:

And so Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands presents over one hundred and fifty items from the Library's literature collections, alongside loans of manuscripts and drawings from libraries and museums in the UK and overseas. We wanted to use these stunning artefacts - handwritten drafts for Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend that the author only just managed to rescue from a train crash, or childhood poetry handwritten by Emily Brontë - to say something about the ways that our country has been seen by writers over the past millennium. To show that authors not only describe and record the changing and the eternal spaces and places of the British Isles; but actively construct, and even create, those spaces and places. (Jamie Andrews)

Also in The Huffington Post, how a six-year-old would describe Jane Eyre judging from this cover:

 Jane Eyre. This is about a girl that goes mining. I don't know why, but she looks like she would go mining, mining for gold.  (Sunny Channel for Babble.com)

Heat World reviews Cox by Kate Lace:

Set at Oxford University, the novel is centred around three members of St George’s Boat Club: the Heathcliff-esque Dan, arrogant rich boy Rollo (it rhymes with follow) and curvaceous cox Amy. 

Aksiyon (Turkey) reviews Jane Eyre 2011. Basler Zeitung (Switzerland) reviews Wuthering Heights 2011 very positively:

Ja, «Wuthering Heights» ist ein Film, der mit einer künstlerischen Vision schwanger geht. Das kann man anstrengend finden oder prätentiös. Aber Andrea Arnold treibt dem Stoff damit alle Nostalgie aus, die bei historischen Verfilmungen sonst in jeder Rockfalte lauert. Was kommt gewöhnlich heraus, wenn Hollywood oder die britische Filmindustrie die Klassiker aus der Epoche zwischen Jane Austen und den Brontës ins Kino oder ins Fernsehen bringt? Eine historisch korrekte Modenschau vor typisch britischer Naturkulisse. Da werden Literaturverfilmungen mit Heimatschutz verwechselt, wird ein nationales Kulturgut verwaltet statt filmisch zum Leben erweckt. Da wird nicht Literatur in Kino verwandelt, sondern eine bestimmte Idee von einer verblichenen britischen Kultur zementiert. (...)
Wer bei Literaturverfilmungen mit einer Traktandenliste im Kino sitzt, um fein säuberlich abzuhaken, welche Elemente aus dem Buch korrekt wiedergegeben wurden, wird an diesen «Wuthering Heights» keine Freude haben. Andrea Arnold bespielt das Kino nicht wie eine Bebilderungsanstalt im Dienst der Literatur, sondern als eine Kunst von eigener Ordnung. Sie übernimmt nicht den Text, sondern verwandelt ihn in die Textur des Kinos. Ihre Bilder machen wieder neugierig auf das Buch, weil sie sich daran reiben. Denn sie verfilmt den Roman als das, was er ist: eine imaginäre Landschaft, die sich in unserem Kopf entfaltet. (Florian Keller) (Translation)

Artsy Does It has the exact opposite opinion; Dingley Bell (in French) is more or less in the middle of the two mentioned extremes; Südostschweiz (Switzerland) also presents the film.

Keigley News talks about the problems of the traders association in Haworth:

The chairman of a group which markets Keighley and Bronte Country as a tourist destination reiterated the need to engage with traders in Haworth.
Matt Stroh reminded the latest meeting of the Bronte Country Partnership (BCP) that the traders currently had no collective representation. The Haworth Village Association was axed last year after its committee cited a lack of support for its efforts.

Wolf on Water interviews the author Hayley Linfield:

Niika: Who were some of your favourite authors growing up, and now?
(...)For the classics, of course I love Charlotte Brontë, and her sister Anne (though not so much Emily), and I love pretty much all the Austen books.

Anna's Book Blog interviews another author, Amanda Grange:

In your writing, its obvious you love both history and romance. Is there a book from either or both genres that inspired you to want to write?
Yes, plenty! Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or anything by Victoria Holt, Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy.

Another author is Nathalie Wexler, interviewed on I Am A Reader, Not A Writer:

What was your favorite book when you were a child/teen?
I had many favorite books—I was an only child, living in a neighborhood where there weren’t many other kids, and books were basically my companions. Perhaps because my father was an Anglophile, I was drawn to British authors: E. Nesbit, who wrote The Five Children and It, was an early favorite. As I got older I moved on to Charles Dickens, who I loved. I also remember being entranced by Jane Eyre.

Dear Teen Me interviews the writer Michaela MacColl who announces that there is another YA Brontë novel in the works:

Now I’m working on my fourth. In fact, right now I’m spinning a story of the Brontë sisters on the moors. And while there’s a brooding hero – I’ve learned that the quirky strong heroines are much more interesting.

An alert from Bainbridge Island:

The Bainbridge Island Senior Center Book Discussion at 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 17 will be on “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. Copies available at the Bainbridge Library.Brontë’s brooding classic set the standard for gothic romance with its atmospheric first-person narrative of a governess, a Byronic employer, and a mysterious manor on the English moors.
The book talk is free and open to everyone and will be held at the Bainbridge Island Senior Center. (Bainbridge Island Review)

Putting Life into Words has visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum (most fittingly, but regrettably anyway, Rebecca Chesney's from the Brontë Weather Project was unable to reach the Parsonage due to weather problems); other visitors of the Parsonage where these students who posts their poems inspired by the trip on DSMS Footlights;  Views from the Countryside is reading Wuthering Heights, The Harper Project and Notes of The Dreamer (in Indonesian) read it  and heather on the hills is mad at some stupid covers; Zakładka do Przyszłości (in Polish) reviews Agnes Grey; The Blag reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; Cine Pipoca Cult (in Portuguese) reviews Jane Eyre 2011; lecturedelivres (in French) talks about Jane Eyre.