The Brontës Baying Lynch-Mob

The Telegraph publishes the obituary of the actress Mary Tamm (1950-2012) who played Blanche Ingram in the BBC 1983 adaptation of Jane Eyre.

Mary Tamm, the actress, who has died of cancer aged 62, was best known for her role as one of the many female assistants to Doctor Who in the long-running eponymous BBC television series.

Juliet Barker's monumental The Brontës will be republished this autumn in a new edition. Publishers Weekly talks about it and asks the author to list all the Brontë novels:

Juliet Barker's landmark biography, The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family, has just received an update--making the feat of chronicling literature's most famous family even more heroic, and making the 1,200 page volume even more comprehensive. Barker, the former curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Howarth (sic), ranked the books of the sisters for Tip Sheet.
Ranking Jane Austen’s novels may cause controversy – but it’s a storm in a tea-cup compared to the elemental forces unleashed when asked to choose between the Brontë novels. The three weird sisters of Haworth arouse passions like no other writers: Austen has fans but the Brontës have devotees and, believe me, there’s a very big difference – criticising Pride and Prejudice doesn’t provoke a baying lynch-mob in quite the same way as hinting that all is not perfection in Wuthering Heights.
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have consistently spent decades in the top five best-selling and most popular novels of all time, so doesn’t that make them the obvious candidates for joint first? But I’d like to make the case for...
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne is the also-ran of the Brontë family yet The Tenant shares all the virtues of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights – powerful writing, gripping storyline, dramatic tension and passionate authorial involvement – whilst remaining firmly rooted in reality (no Rochester fooling his guests by disguising himself as a gypsy-woman or Heathcliff digging up his lover’s corpse). (...)
2. Jane Eyre3. Wuthering Heights4. Villette5. Agnes Grey6. The Professor7. Shirley (Read more)

Check the article to find out about Juliet Barker's reasons behind her choices.

The Birmingham Post reviews the recent piano concert by Mark Bebbington at the Leasowes Music Festival which included John Joubert's Lyric Fantasy on Themes by Jane Eyre:

Birmingham-based Joubert’s Lyric Fantasy on themes from the opera Jane Eyre echoed Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, depicting the troubled love between Jane and Mr Rochester. Bebbington’s interpretation perfectly demonstrated Jane’s innocence through gentle lyricism, and the passionate and brooding nature of Mr Rochester with wide dynamic contrasts and dissonant, tormenting harmonies, in a reading combining strength and intensity with a gentle, poised touch. (Sarah Chatterley)

The Wall Street Journal talks about the publication of erotic retellings of classics and mentions something that we think summarises the topic perfectly:

As the steamy "Fifty Shades of Grey" and both of its sequels dominate best-seller lists, an enterprising electronic publishing house will publish on Monday a sadomasochistic version of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre," as well as sexed-up renderings of tales by Ms. Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. (...)
The books are priced based on how many new words have been added. "Jane Eyre" is $5.23; "Pride and Prejudice" is $4.36. (Stefanie Cohen)

New Zealand Listener loves Wuthering Heights 2011:

Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Here, now, is a film. Arnold also had the option of explanatory voiceover, and a great deal of narrative to explain – the book covers decades of time, and it’s told in a series of nested first person narratives, with our primary narrator relating a story someone else told him. Neither of these two narrators is at all central to the story, though they each have enough interesting work to do around the edges that you could build them into a TV version easily enough. Arnold wastes no time on them. She strips the story to its core, which is to say she opens with the boy Heathcliff arriving at Wuthering Heights, and lets us follow his relationship with Cathy as it develops through the years, rather than in flashback.  (...) (David Larsen)

The Daily Mail on Toby Stephens:

Having won an army of lusting fans as Jane Eyre’s caddish lover Rochester and the evil Prince John in Robin Hood, he preferred to stretch his acting muscles on stage and in movies, so it has taken something completely different to lure him back to the box. (Nicole Lampert)

Should we be careful about spoilers in reviews and articles? The Economist gives its opinion:

Last year, for instance, many reviews of Cary Joji Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” mentioned the fate of the first Mrs Rochester. A spoiler? The critics in question reasoned that their readers probably should be more familiar with a 160-year-old cornerstone of English literature. (N.B.)

The Huffington Post has suggestions for today's London Olympic Opening Ceremony. We found this one particularly engaging:

Thomas the Tank Engine vs Edward Rochester
10,000 Edward Rochesters leap into the arena, ignoring the clamoring made by 10,000 Bertha Masons who are perched on top of the stadium's roof, and proposing marriage to all the competitors.
It seems that they might just succeed until a 10-mile long steam train breaks through one of the stadium walls. Thomas (for it is it) saves the day by revealing the truth to all, and Jane Eyre then drops in via a Union Jack parachute so they can be happily married on the back of the coal wagon. Music by David Bowie. (Andrew Losowsky)

Parma Today (Italy) says the following about Jane Campion's The Piano:
"lezioni di piano" per "cinema alla casa della musica - estate". il capolavoro di jane campion lunedì 30 luglio alle 21 a ingresso gratuito Eventi a Parma
„

Capolavoro assoluto della neozelandese Jane Campion (1955), Lezioni di piano è un dramma che coniuga il romanticismo gotico di Emily Brontë con l'acceso erotismo di D. H. Lawrence, filtrandoli attraverso la sensibilità e la lucidità di una donna di oggi che rifiuta l'ipoteca del pessimismo tragico. (Translation)

Tendance Ouest gives more figures about the French box office of Jane Eyre 2011:

Sorties du 25 juillet : Top 1er jour France
01. The Dark Knight Rises. 423.970
02. Jane Eyre. 7.483 (Translation)

Grantland thinks that the problems in the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart couple are like Wuthering Heights:

I love how this story is written like Wuthering Heights. It's so perfect. (Molly Lambert)

If you say so.

MarketWatch announces that

Scholastic,  the global children's publishing, education and media company, today announced an agreement with Trajectory, Inc., a technology and marketing oriented publishing company, to offer a selection of illustrated classics on Storia(TM), the teacher-recommended eReading app for kids. Titles can be purchased through Scholastic Book Clubs beginning in November, 2012. (...)
Among the Trajectory classic titles to be offered on Storia are A Christmas Carol, The Jungle Book, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, and Cinderella.

Keighley News remembers some the activities this summer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

A host of creative activities are on offer to families during the summer holidays at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
The Haworth attraction is arranging dressing up, craft activities, story writing, a treasure hunt and short talks and walks.
Local artist Rachel Lee will lead Crafty Tuesdays, when children can make items such as miniature gardens, paintings or wallets, every Tuesday in August from 11am to 3.30pm.
In “Phantom Fury, Savage Tales” visitors can take dramatic words from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and put them together in their own way to create something new.
“Stormy and wet, stormy and wet...”, a passage in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, has inspired a trail at the parsonage where children can look for other phrases describing weather, while Look Beautiful In A Bonnet lets visitors raid a dressing up chest.
For details, call Sue Newby on (01535) 640185 or e-mail her at susan.newby@bronte.org.uk.

Studio 5 lists 'clean romantic reads':

Jane EyreJane Eyre's quiet patience, endless perseverance and sharp mind catch the eye of her handsome and arrogant master, Mr. Rochester, after she is employed as governess to his ward. Despite the fact that Rochester is far above her station, Jane falls irrevocably in love with him and soon discovers that he may share her passion. But tragedy and old secrets arise to stand in the way of Jane's happiness.
Deep sigh. Few love stories are as affecting or as tragically romantic as "Jane Eyre." First published in 1847, Brontë's quiet but stalwart heroine broke the mold of standard class conceptions and is one of the most endearing female characters of all time.

Karen Tay's Reading is Bliss blog on Stuff (New Zealand) selects literary crushes:

Honorary mentions go to Peeta from the Hunger Games (soooo sweet, crow several middle-aged ladies), Sherlock Holmes (maybe because Robert Downey Jr plays him in the films), Anna Karenina (again...really?? She threw herself in front of a moving train, people) and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (I kinda get it, but he's too tortured for me).

Books, Books, the Magical Fruit interviews the author Kate Lutter:

Who or what inspired you to become a writer?
Wow. That’s a great question. My earliest memory is eighth grade when I used to wake up at the crack of dawn and write. Back then I was writing a hot and steamy romance between a nun and a priest because I went to Catholic school, and I guess I was curious about a nun’s life. I was a voracious reader—the usual classics—Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice—so I guess it was a combination of being surrounded by great literature and being born with the gene to write, if there is such a thing.

Dark Matter Fanzine interviews Charlaine Harris:

What authors or novels have influenced your work?
So many. I am an avid reader, and I’ve always enjoyed a wide variety of writers. I read mystery, science fiction, classic novels like “Jane Eyre” and “Pride and Prejudice.”

Jennifer McMurrain talks with S.B. Niccum:

Best book you've ever read?
My favorite book, that I read and re-read is Jane Eyre. I have a weakness for all the classics that have orphans. ...Maybe because I am one.

juliatomaszewska  (in Polish) reviews Agnes Grey; Lire, écouter, voir à Villeurbanne (in French) reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre; Words to Read By and Mapas do Meu Nada (in Portuguese) post about Wuthering Heights; Meditative Meanderings and Cassandra Lowery compare Twilight and Jane Eyre; Lit Lovers & Corset Laces discusses the proposal scenes of Jane Eyre 1952 and Jane Eyre 1957; Las lágrimas de Alicia (in Spanish) has dressed a doll after Jane Eyre 2011; Bokälskarinnan (in Swedish) reviews the Classical Comics adaptation of Jane Eyre; Act One Presents posts some pictures of the rehearsals of the Wuthering Heights production that will present next month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.