Save Charlotte's Path

First editions of Jane Eyre, Shirley, The Professor, the 1848 editions of the Poems published by Smith, Elder and the Haworth edition of their works are going under the hammer today at the auctioneer Dominic Winter. See page 65 of the catalogue, lots 270 to 275.

270  Brontë (Charlotte, "Currer Bell"). Villette, 1st ed., 3 vols., Smith, Elder, 1853, half-titles discarded, vol. 1 with 8pp.
pubs. ads. dated January 1853 at rear (last two ad. leaves torn away), contemp. ms. ownership signature at head of title-pages,
hinges split, vols. 1 and 3 lacking front free endpapers, orig. blindstamped brown cloth gilt, cocked, rubbed and worn, with
some fraying to extrems., 8vo
Sadleir 349; Wolff 828.
(3) £200-300  Final Price: £320
271  Brontë (Charlotte, "Currer Bell"). The Professor. A Tale, 2 vols., 1st ed., 1857, half-titles present, vol. 1 with single
leaf pubs. ads. at rear, vol. 2 with 16pp. pubs. cat. at rear dated June 1857, first vol. with early ms. ownership name on front
free endpaper, some soiling to endpapers and hinges split, orig. purple blind-stamped cloth gilt, faded to brown, shaken,
rubbed, and spine ends sl. frayed, 8vo, housed together in a custom-made green half morocco solander box
Sadleir 347; Wolff 827. Charlotte Bronte's first novel, but her last major work to be published.
(1) £300-400 Final Price: £440
272  Brontë (Charlotte, "Currer Bell"). Shirley. a Tale, 3 vols., 1st ed., Smith, Elder, 1849, without half-titles or 16pp. pubs.
cat to rear of vol. 1, generally browned and soiled, title-pages and final leaves of first and third vols. laid down on linen, 20th
c. burgundy half sheep gilt, extrems. rubbed, 8vo
Sadleir 348.
(3) £200-300 Final Price: £300
273  Brontë (Charlotte, "Currer Bell"). Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, new ed., Smith, Elder, 1857, 4pp. pubs. ads. at rear,
edges foxed, ads. on endpapers, orig. printed orange cloth boards, rubbed and dusty, foot of spine a trifle frayed, 8vo, together
with a similarly bound copy of The Professor, 1862, cloth binding sl. worn and becoming detached at upper hinge
(2) £100-150 Final Price: £300
274  Brontë (Charlotte, Emily & Anne). Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1st ed., 2nd issue, pub. Smith, Elder and
Co., 1846 [1848], errata slip and terminal pubs. ad. leaf present (undated), marbled endpapers, upper hinge split, t.e.g.,
remainder rough-trimmed, late 19th c. olive green crushed morocco gilt by Riviere, spine faded to brown, some rubbing to
extrems., 8vo
Hayward 266; Parrish pp.82-85; Wise 2. The Brontë sisters' first venture into print was a failure, selling only a few copies of the 1,000 printed when it was first
published by Aylott and Jones in 1846. Several copies were distributed by the Brontës to friends, but the balance of 961 copies was tranferred to Smith, Elder
and Co., who, after the success of Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre', reissued the volume in October 1848 with a cancel title-page.
(1) £300-500 Final Price: £420
275  Brontë (Charlotte). The Life and Works of Charlotte Brontë and Her Sisters, 7 vols., Haworth edition, Smith, Elder &
Co., 1899-1902, b & w plts., t.e.g., remainder untrimmed, contemp. green half calf gilt, spines faded, rubbed, 8vo
(7) £100-150 Final Price: £130

More info on the wonderful 'gentleman's library' of Mr William Forwood in the Daily Mail (with lovely pictures) and Wales Online.

A book that would look somewhat out of place there would be Jane Eyre Laid Bare, which is discussed today by The Australian.

"Reader, I married him" is the low-key climax of Charlotte Brontë's gothic, proto-feminist novel Jane Eyre.
In a new "erotic re-imagining" of the book called Jane Eyre Laid Bare, the climaxes are of an altogether different nature. It's more a case of: "Reader, I ravished his candlesticks, perved on his private bondage orgies, then spent 77 pages rogering him silly." [...]
Having them shag each other senseless every second strips them of all their smouldering understatement.
At one particularly low point, Sinclair throws historical continuity to the hounds and has the master of Thornfield Hall give his governess an oh-so-20th-century Brazilian pubic trim.
Reader, it's unutterably wretched. (Emma Jane)

Livemint reviews it as well (and quotes from us!):

Of these reinterpretive projects, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has enjoyed the most attention, not only from writers dreaming up stuff on the Internet for the love of it, but also from professional publishing. Jean Rhys’ landmark Wide Sargasso Sea, perhaps the single most famous contemporary example of a transformative work of literature, is Jane Eyre fanfiction, which interprets key elements of the novel from the perspective of its “other” woman—Rochester’s mixed-race wife, Bertha Mason, the mad woman locked up in the attic as he pursues his ghoulish affair with Jane.
Then there is the porn. A cursory glance at the record shows several energetic efforts to recast Jane Eyre in the mould of something from the pages of Pearl. There is Rochester and Rochester: Consummation, Reader, I Married Him and— stand back, E.L. James—Disciplining Jane. As the blogger Cristina, who runs Brontë Blog (bronteblog.blogspot.com), says, “…those are probably not the first ones either.”
So Eve Sinclair’s Jane Eyre Laid Bare has precedents which cannot be fully sidelined by the obliterating spotlight of the Fifty Shades phenomenon, and deserves to be read in this context, and not just as a me-too entrant. [...]
The big literary problem with sexing up Jane Eyre is that the original novel is already full of sex. Volumes of scholarship have been written about its insights into female desire; no adult reader who picks it up can fail to discern its ferocious, complicated attitudes to sex and romantic intimacy. Yearning suffuses Jane Eyre—when its early reviewer G.H. Lewes described it as “suspiria de profundis”, or “sighs from the depths”, it should be completely reasonable to understand it in the context of the novel’s erotics.
Jane Eyre Laid Bare wants to make this erotic subtext explicit. It retells only a small part of the novel, beginning, unlike the original, with Jane’s arrival at Thornfield Hall, and ending the story, with a twist, soon after Jane and Rochester’s marriage is prevented at the altar. The characterization sticks close enough to the original that there are very good moments of recognition in the sombre, self-controlled, first-person narrative. But this is a Jane with sex very evidently on her mind. Her time at the repressive school Lowood is told in enjoyably titillating flashbacks about lesbian initiation, with a dark subplot about child abuse. Her attraction to the growling, overwhelmingly male Rochester is almost instant, and the original story’s sequence of events becomes, here, episodes that foreground her desire to have sex with him.
Reader, she does; although not before a rather clever episode involving Macguffin Blanche Ingram (the woman Jane thinks is Rochester’s future wife, early in the book) and a group of Rochester’s young friends whose singular interest in life seems to be giving each other orgasms. (Supriya Nair)

Maureen Corrigan reviews Susanna Moore's latest novel, The Life of Objects for NPR and finds

There's a Jane Eyre feel to Beatrice's arrival at the fabulous Metzenburg mansion, which is eerily near-empty of staff because of the coming war.

Writer Lauren Fox is a fan of Wuthering Heights, as read in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

A classic that matters to you: "Wuthering Heights." Every girl loves a bad boy, and Heathcliff is the original. I love those dark, forbidden, swirling passions and the misty moors and the thwarted desire. I'm a sucker for thwarted desire. (Jim Higgins)

Sonam Kapoor too, as is well known. From the Hindustan Times:

Which is your favourite love story? Wuthering Heights. It’s my all-time best. I have a fascination for this tragic, unrequited kind of love. A love which is selfless and remains unfulfilled… oooh! I am such a sucker for it. Very filmi, no? (Laughs) (Farhan Akhtar)

Planet Siol (in Slovenian) has an article on the 2011 adaptation of the novel while Hollywood Film Examiner mentions it along with Anna Karenina and Les Misérables. And we suppose this reference in a recap of So You Think You Can Dance on Hollywood.com is to Kate Bush's song:

Like every other opening routine we’ve seen this season, it was dark and overwrought with emotion and everyone was wearing all black and the guys spent most of the two minutes tossing the flailing ladies around the stage. But I have to say, it was pretty cool in a Wuthering Heights kind of way. (Jessica Isner)

The MetroWest Daily News features the show Blood Rose Rising in Cambridge which

in many ways is an homage to the idea of the gothic story, which has a lot to do with longing and history and the fight for life and self," Evett explained. "We pay tribute to a lot of classic gothic tropes, from "Frankenstein" and "Jane Eyre" and [Gothic writers] Wilkie Collins, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen [sic] Poe... " (Kilian Melloy)

More on theatre as Lansing City Pulse reminds us that Chekhov's Three Sisters

is the classic tragicomedy, which was legendarily inspired by the relationship between the Brontë sisters. (Dana Casadei)

There's always something worth fighting for in or around Haworth. The Yorkshire Post reports,

A businessman is due to unveil major plans to build 120 homes on green-field land in Haworth – and he wants to build another 200 if all goes to plan.
Bradford-based Pervez Abbas has yet to submit a planning application but opposition is already growing from residents and local politicians.
Mr Abbas owns several acres of land to the west of Weavers Hill which he wants to develop in stages.
He is due to submit a planning application for houses on part of the land within the next few weeks.
Mr Abbas told the Yorkshire Post he was “95 per cent sure” that the planning application would be given the go-ahead by councillors, despite having failed in his bid to gain permission for a previous scheme. [...]
Opposition to the plans is also expected to come from the Brontë Society, a literary group.
Sally McDonald, who chairs the Brontë Society Council, said the land in question was close to a route known locally as Charlotte’s Path, after the famous Brontë sister.
“We would be very much opposed to this development on Weavers Hill because of its proximity to the moor and Charlotte’s Path, which Charlotte would have strolled along.
“We have to protect this landscape, which is worth a lot to tourism and the economy. If you start to tamper with what people want to see, they won’t come.”
She wants the land to be protected from development.
Bradford Councillor Russell Brown, who sits on the local planning committee, said he had to remain impartial and judge each planning application on its merits.
However, he did say that residents had already started to email him to express their opposition to the plans.
Mr Abbas said the application would be submitted to Bradford Council within four to six weeks.

Orsérie (in French) reviews Jane Eyre while Laura's Adventures in Bookland is looking forward to reading it for the first time. Home Sweet Home (in French) posts about the 2006 BBC miniseries. Daniel Benneworth-Gray includes a re-imagined cover for the novel. Brona's Books has found Jane Eyre Laid Bare 'tedious, contrived'. Wuthering Heights is reviewed by No es nada (in Spanish) and Its all about my world (in Malay) while Like Water is looking forward to seeing the 2011 adaptation. Z pasją o dobrych książkach i nie tylko... and Popularna Klasyka both write in Polish about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. A Fangirl's View reviews Marta Acosta's Dark Companion while Bookyurt interviews Tina Connolly, author or Ironskin.