The Economist has a fascinating article about the copy of John James Audubon's
Birds of America who is at the Museum of Natural History in Cleveland, Ohio. Regrettably some of the facts in the article are slightly misleading:
In Margot Livesey's novel "The Flight of Gemma Hardy", an update of Charlotte Brönte's (SIC) Jane Eyre, the heroine spends hours reading her uncle's copy of John James Audubon's "Birds of America", the famous double-elephant folio of bird prints. (...)
But while the suggestion that Jane could carry the book is unrealistic, Ms Livesey's reference to her access of the book makes sense. Brönte's (SIC) father, the Reverend Patrick Brönte (SIC) owned the "Birds of America" books at one time. In her Life of Charlotte Brönte (SIC), Elizabeth Gaskell reproduces a letter from her to Emily, which includes a list of book recommendations. "For Natural History, read Bewick, and Audubon, and Goldsmith," she wrote. Brönte's (SIC) set, enjoyed by Anne and Emily as well as Charlotte, does still exist, intact, and bound in brown leather. Where? In Cleveland, Ohio.
The complete set is on permanent display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, far from Bröntes' (SIC) Haworth. The books are on the museum's second-floor library, inside a specially built cabinet from 1947. There is no disputing the book's provenance: the Reverand Brönte (SIC) signed four volumes of the Biography. (The first volume contains some of his notes as well, but the museum has resisted efforts at deciphering them.)
How did this set of books, so key to both literary and bibliophilic history, get to Cleveland? Via another literary great, Amy Lowell. An American poet, Lowell bought the set from a London book dealer in 1901, and paid $1,575. After her death in 1925 the books were sold, and in 1926 were listed by a Boston book dealer for $4,750. In 1947 John Sherwin, a Cleveland banking giant, bought the set and donated it to the Cleveland museum. (A.T.)
As far as we know, Patrick Brontë didn't have a copy of Audubon's magnificent (and very expensive)
Birds of America. Nevertheless Audobon's five volumes of his
Ornithological Biography (published in the 1830s) were owned by the Brontës. In the first volume, Patrick Brontë inscribed the following (despite what the article says about resisting deciphering):
"There are 5 volumes of this work - prince &1.4.0each - amounting together to &6.0.0. All these have I procured - P.B. 1852".
Picture Source: http://cmnhlibrary.blogspot.com/2011/10/celebrating-gift.html
Marcia Kaye in
The Toronto Star wonders if a classic is still a classic after being modernised:
Earlier this week an online publisher released its sexed-up rewrite of Jane Eyre, the 1847 Charlotte Brontë novel about a young governess and her authoritarian boss. So now, instead of “Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously,” we have “My master captured my wrists and secured them behind my back…. Those torrid throbbings of desire surely filled my deepest recesses.” In an online introduction of its explicit, Fifty Shades-style makeovers of novels long out of copyright, Clandestine Classics writes, “You didn’t really think that these much loved characters only held hands and pecked cheeks did you?”
Well, yes, kind of. Maybe it’s just me, but wasn’t the whole point of Jane’s inner struggle to temper her passion with her firm moral principles? Whether the new pornification gets you hot and bothered or simply bothered, it’s worth revisiting Brontë’s original, elegant Jane Eyre, whose romance may be all the more thrilling for its forced restraint. (...)
In the midst of her romantic tensions Jane must contend with a variety of Gothic terrors – a mysterious fire, weird laughing, a madwoman in the attic – as well as a stint of homelessness and near-starvation out on the wonderfully bleak, windswept moors. Ultimately she comes to terms with her own feelings around S&M. I’m talking about spirituality and morality, which, perhaps even more than the S&M in the new erotic version, are capable of creating both painful anguish and sublime fulfillment.
The Journal talks about the chef Kevin Mulroney but begins the article with a description of Yorkshire people:
Yorkshire people born and bred are a particular breed. They are renowned (although it is undoubtedly more fiction than fact) for being proud, stubborn, argumentative, blunt, self-effacing and more rough and ready around the edges than is traditionally the norm.
They are also a passionate breed. They are fanatical about their cricket, football and rugby, home-grown literary giants such as the Brontë sisters and Alan Bennett, and their food and drink. (Katharina Everitt)
Film Carew (The Music.com.au) thinks highly of
Wuthering Heights 2011, seen at the Melbourne Film Festival:
One of the most radical adaptations of canonical English lit ever, Arnold’s gloriously glowering slice of rural socio-realism foregrounds the wiley, windy moors of Emily Brontë’s tragic Gothic romance; reducing its star-cross’d lovers to tiny figures, ghost ships drifting through the rolling fogs. (Anthony Carew)
Exactly the same as
The Hindu:
It appears that only in this age, freed of every imaginable restriction, can certain works of literature be adapted the way they were meant to be. Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights has swearing and nudity (all the more startling because it is not featured in a conventional sexual context but in a more private moment), and its biggest surprise — something unimaginable in an earlier era — is that Heathcliff is played by a black actor. This casting erects yet another barrier between the lovers — they’re not just from different social strata, but also ethnic backgrounds. And in those times, a “coloured boy” would have been considered a savage, which dovetails beautifully with Brontë’s conception of her male protagonist.
When novels are converted to cinema, one section of the audience expects fidelity — they want to see on film the images they saw inside their heads when they read the book. Others, fewer in number, look forward to how a story that exists in one medium finds its feet in another. In their eyes, the novel is already complete. The film can only add or subtract, and the more filmic these additions and subtractions, the more interesting the adaptation becomes.
The new Wuthering Heights will annoy the former category of audience and thrill the latter. What’s important, to me, isn’t faithfulness but the vision the filmmaker brings to bear on the material[.] (Baradwaj Rangan)
The
Daily Mail has an article the 'mankle' frenzy:
Debenhams Director of menswear buying, Paul Baldwin said: 'The tailors of Saville Row must be having a fit.
Downward dogs, disco dancing and funky beats: The new workout party that's putting the fun into yoga
'For years, they have taken great pride in measuring men’s trousers so that the hem skilfully kisses the front of the shoe, and hangs gracefully down the back.
Debenhams have seen a 20% rise in cropped trousers, like these by Jasper Conrad, in six months alone
'But now, ankle swingers are the name of the game. There are now so many manly ankles and calves on our High Streets that Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters would have a fit.' (Bianca London)
Not the only thing the Brontës will be concernet about according to
Manorama Online:
And now with social media comes the merciless butchering of the language. We live in a culture obsessed with truncation. Short is the new thin. The Brontë sisters might need their smelling salts when confronted with lols, brbs and asaps. (Anjuly Mathai)
The Independent on how schools are changing GCSEs in favour of neo O-levels:
Gaynor Deoraj, an English teacher at Tanbridge House school in Horsham, West Sussex, a state school, said the IGCSE allowed students to "creatively and enthusiastically engage with the text". Instead of learning in bite-sized chunks for coursework, they could concentrate on studying the whole text.
"To hear a Year 11 (GCSE) student state that Wuthering Heights is one of the most fantastic novels she has ever read makes my job worthwhile," she said. "When I started teaching the novel, five out of a set of 32 students were positive about the book; when we finished, 25 thought the book was clever, inspiring and beautifully written." (Riachard Garner)
The Telegraph has an article about the recently deceased Maeve Binchy with a curious Brontë reference:
All novelists who have had children are acutely aware that the very best of our sex — Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës, Virginia Woolf — were childless.
NPR's reviews the latest novel by Ross MacDonald:
As those descriptions demonstrate, French brilliantly evokes the isolation of a Gothic landscape out of the Brontes and transposes it to a luxury suburban development gone bust. The cause, of course, is Ireland's economic free fall — the Celtic Tiger turned needy cub — and, like all superior detective fiction. (Maureen Corregan)
We honestly don't know how much
Fifty Shades stuff we can stand. Another article in
The Huffington Post:
The story itself is a trope as old as time: the sadomasochist with a heart of gold.
What's that? Struggling to remember the scene in Jane Eyre where Rochester flogs Jane with a cat o' nine tails? Then perhaps it's the novelty of James' naughty novel that's driving women to the bookshelves. (Tyler Moss)
Interia (Poland) talks about the actor Krzysztof Pieczyński, permanently associated to his role in the TV series
Dom:
Dlatego pan Krzysztof tak tęskni za miłością. Wciąż jej szuka z nadzieją, że jest gdzieś tuż obok... Martwi go, że dotychczas jego związki z kobietami były emocjonalne i krótkie. A kolegom zwierza się, że takie kobiety jak tytułowa bohaterka powieści Emily Brontë "Jane Eyre" - bezgranicznie oddana i kochająca mężczyznę - istnieją tylko w starych powieściach. (Iza Wojdak) (Translation)
Not even in fiction because Emily Brontë didn't write
Jane Eyre.
Alexander Nazaryan in
The New Yorker writes about hypochondriacs:
In “The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives,” Brian Dillon provides pithy accounts of some of history’s most famous hypos: Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë and Florence Nightingale.
Otros Cines (Spain) reviews
The Dark Knight Rises:
Marion Cotillard y Anne Hathaway tienen mucho que ver en este, que es uno de los puntos más atractivos del Batman más atractivo. Con los músculos intactos pero el cuerpo dañado, maduro, solitario y de vuelta de todo, como el igualmente sexy señor Rochester (sobre todo cuando tenía la voz grave de William Hurt) que le rugía a una virginal Jane Eyre porque lo conquistaba la pureza de ella, así lo encuentra Miranda Tate (Cotillard) en esa tarde lluviosa en que terminan desnudándose al lado del fuego, como en la más chapucera historia de Corín Tellado. (Marina Yuszczuk) (Translation)
T-Mag on beach books:
Per gli amanti dei classici, le opere di Jane Austen in generale e “Cime tempestose” di Emily Brontë rivolte perlopiù a giovani pulzelle innamorate sono un evergreen della lettura internazionale, per non parlare dell’assoluto capolavoro fantasy Tolkeniano “Il signore degli anelli”, certamente apprezzato da un pubblico più vasto ed eterogeneo rispetto alle due autrici ottocentesche. (Martina Marotta) (Translation)
And now for our (almost) daily list of writers and Brontëites.
SugarScope interviews
Cora Harrison:
Who are your all time favourite male and female book heroes? (...)
For a female character, I would choose Jane Eyre. She had great courage and a sense of humour and had great self-reliance. (IFoley)
Tony's Thoughts talks with KT Davis:
In some ways your writing reminds me of Robin Hobb, which author/s have been a major influence on your writing?
Gosh that is a tricky question. And thank you, she’s one of the best fantasy authors out there IMO, I’m flattered. I did my degree in literature, and so I suppose I’ve been influenced by a really wide range of writers. I also think there’s a diference between who I like to read and who’s influenced my writing, I’m not sure if I even know who’s influenced me. Certainly Gemmell, (Emily) Brontë, Joseph Conrad, Robert Howard, and indeed, Robin Hobb/ Megan Lindholm, inspire me. Oh yeah, and Voltaire, because he had a wicked sense of humour.
Alice Gaines insists on her love for
Jane Eyre almost in every interview:
While I certainly enjoy my stories, I have to admit that I love tortured heroes. My favorite hero of all time is Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester is lots of things…mysterious, desirable, haunted…but he’s most definitely not nice. The things he puts Jane through before he’ll admit to loving her can only be called cruel. Even then, he lies to her about his marital status, almost forcing her into a bigamous marriage. Still, I loved him, and I wish I could write a hero like him. But, every time I try to write a Mr. Rochester, I get what one reviewer very astutely called a “bad boy wannabe.” When I get right down to it, I can’t make a hero behave cruelly. I always fix him on the page, and he ends up nice. (Read Our Lips!)
TBRG: What was the first romance book that you read?
Alice: Jane Eyre. I read it when I was a preteen, and it had a lasting effect on me. Though the book has some elements you wouldn’t find in a modern romance, it is a romance novel. Mr. Rochester is my favorite hero of all time. (The Book Reading Gals)
Book Lovin' Mamas interviews
Ninette Swann:
Who is your favorite author and what is your favorite book?
(...) My favorite book is Jane Eyre. It's simply perfect.
Thomsenlee talks with
Elizabeth Ashworth:
Kelly: Do you have a Keeper Shelf? What?s on it?
Elizabeth: (...) I also have some books by the Brontës Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and others that I like to re-read from time to time.
The Economist has a fascinating article about the copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America who is at the Museum of Natural History in Cleveland, Ohio. Regrettably some of the facts in the article are slightly misleading:
A thoroughly enjoyable novel! Reminiscent of novels such as Jane Eyre, Gemma is a feisty heroine who overcomes many obstacles to find a sense of herself and her past.
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