Brontë's Words of Wisdom

The List reviews positively Act One's Wuthering Heights performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival:

The play stays admirably close to the original text, but perhaps the actors would do better to adapt the narrative further, because their time constraints and dedication to the original mean the scene changes are too quick sometimes to allow for proper audience empathy with the situation and the different characters, whose names and relationships are hard to follow at the best of times. (...)
Impressive characterisation and admirable commitment to the text make this a must-see for fans of the book, though the quick scene swaps and endless narrative might fox those less familiar with the original work. (Phoebe Cook)

The List also reviews another piece at the Fringe with sombre Brontë-related content: Boris and Sergey's Vaudevillian Adventure:

Manipulated by six hands each, Boris and Sergey start with wittily miniaturised Vaudeville turns. Sergey hops onto a balancing ball and wobbles around poison-tipped drawing pins. Party-poppers explode around him like tabletop fireworks. Boris follows with a drag recreation of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, a tiny smoke-machine belching into his face. (Matt Trueman)

Lyn Gardner at The Guardian discusses the Fringe so far and talks about solo literary shows in general:

All very heartfelt, of course, but inevitably these shows always feels as if they belong in the book tent, or possibly a clever student's A-level folder, rather than the theatre. Shared Experience has taken a more imaginative approach with both the Brontës and Mary Shelley, and I have a soft spot for Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick, not least because it sends up the fact that we tend to prefer to hear gossip about a writer's life than actually read their books. But the one-person literary show seldom finds a form that makes for exciting theatre.

The final keynote speech at the 2012 Edinburgh World Writers' conference given by China Miéville can be read on The Guardian:

You don't have to think that writing is lever-pulling, that anyone could have written Jane Eyre or Notebook of a Return to my Native Land to think that the model of writers as the Elect is at best wrong, at worst, a bit slanderous to everyone else. We piss and moan about the terrible quality of self-published books, as if slews of god-awful crap weren't professionally expensively published every year. 

Historians and authors recommend best places in Britain in The Guardian:

A favourite place of mine to take visitors – but not before they've read a novel in preparation – is the Brontë Parsonage Museum (bronte.org.uk, £7/£3.60) in Haworth. The picturesque West Yorkshire village near Bradford is surrounded by the moorland the Brontës described in their work and which was the setting for Emily's Wuthering Heights. In spring and summer Haworth can be reached by steam train from Keighley. The Brontë Museum, next to a rather Gothic cemetery, gives a good sense of the constrained circumstances of many parsons' families at the time, and its exhibition includes some of the tiny manuscript books with which the siblings honed their creative skills. (Ann Heilmann)

Mark Hedges looks for UK's best romantic retreats in The Telegraph:

The tops of mountains are for dreamers; windswept moors and wild places for writers. Think Du Maurier, Brontë, Hardy, Wordsworth, Clare: their works are synonymous with untamed nature. So why not visit the lands of their quixotic dreams? Romance is, after all, 90 per cent inspiration.

The pleasure of reading a novel as told on The Guardian's Blogging Students:

When I see people my age frantically devouring Jane Eyre, I immediately think to myself, "literature student". Let's face it, they're bound to be. Who in their right mind would labour through some weighty classic for mere pleasure?
Sadly, but undeniably, novel reading is rapidly becoming a leisure pursuit of the past. (Henry Cosh)

The Daily Beast reviews the US edition of the revised edition of Juliet Barker's The Brontës:

This revised and updated edition of the definitive biography of the Brontë family sports a handsome hardcover jacket with a photo of the snowbound Brontë home on the cover. It ought to be enough to send readers back to this 1994 classic. A “new” discovery of Charlotte Brontë’s letter about her wedding dress is “particularly delightful,” as Barker wrote in her preface. “White I had to buy and did buy to my own amazement—but I took care to get it in cheap material … If I must make a fool of myself—it shall be on an economical plan,” the Jane Eyre author wrote. The few who caught a glimpse of her in the white muslin dress “thought she looked like a snowdrop,” Barker notes. It is to the biographer’s credit that she piles on almost 1,000 pages of such details and never makes it boring—tedious, perhaps, and a steady chore if you want to conquer the books, but never boring. Barker’s greatest service is to rescue the family of Charlotte, Emily (Wuthering Heights), and Anne (Agnes Grey) from myth, most of all to the male members, who were provided particularly hideous stereotypes by Charlotte’s first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell. The doom and tragedy are there, for there’s no denying that the sisters all died young. But, in truth, there were plenty of moments when they looked like a snowdrop. (Jimmy So)

GateHouse News Service talks about Fifty Shades of Grey:

This erotica is expertly couched in the story of a beautiful, virginal young woman who meets a powerful, handsome, rich, generous and ardent young man who likes to have the upper hand. Jane Eyre’s saga comes to mind. (Rae Padilla Francoeur)

The Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) is also not very convinced:

The main female characters in both series [Grey saga and Twilight] are portrayed as dependent on men; whatever independence or sense of self they had vanished the moment they felt they were in love.
Such portrayal makes a girl like me groan and moan in this day and age. Yet, people go on and on about how strong Bella or Ana is, while they are not.
Strong is what one would use to describe Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre or Scarlett O'Hara. Indeed, gone are the days when female characters had their minds and lives - I am not even going to mention the far from realistic portrayal of a BDSM relationship in Fifty Shades. (MeMy Mo)

Classics///Hits reviews Shirley; Descriptedlines, BiblioPepe (in Swedish) and jot em down post about Jane Eyre; You've Got To Read This publishes a quick digest of the Brontë story; Kto czyta książki, żyje podwójnie (in Polish) reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; the other Anne Brontë novel, Agnes Grey is reviewed on Rockabilly Life; Leo, Leo... ¿tú qué lees? (in Spanish) didn't like Wuthering Heights; Book Angel Booktopia reviews A Breath of Eyre and Withering Tights; Soubenn ar geek (in Breton) posts (we think) about Jane Eyre 2011;

Finally we bring your attention to this great idea by Stylist Magazine:

The Brontë Sisters' Words of WisdomLife advice from the Brontë sisters

There's more to the Brontë sisters than bonnets and looking out over the moors, so we thought it was high time to honour three of Stylist's literary heroines - Charlotte, Emily and Ann (sic) Brontë .

Daughters of a cleric, the sisters lived quiet and reclusive lives in Victorian England. Yet browse the collective works of the talented trio and you'll find pages peppered with forward-thinking statements about a woman's role in society and indispensable life advice about love, marriage and friendship. From Ms Eyres' (sic) classic lines to wise words from Anne's lesser known novels, we've picked out a selection of the most insightful quotes from the Brontë sisters.

Check the quotes here.