Emily Brontë grasps and keeps The Hobbit

First of all, we know Shirley is not everyone's cup of tea but we would like to remind you that it was published on a day like today in 1849, which makes it 163 years old today. Today might be a great day to give it another chance if you didn't enjoy it the first time around or curl up with it if you do like it already.

The Lakewood Indie Movie Examiner reviewer writes about Wuthering Heights 2011 admitting to never having read the novel.

Perhaps if at least one of the characters in this tale were likable, or even interesting, it might be easier to stay invested for two hours. Arnold has stripped her film down so much, though, that we barely get know any of the characters beyond their surface traits. Even the central tragic romance has no depth, as we are given no reason for Heathcliff and Catherine to be attracted to each other besides proximity. Everyone eventually winds up trying to ruin everyone else, and it's hard not to feel as if they all deserve what they get. A cursory reading of the Wikipedia entry on the novel reveals this is more or less accurate to the source material, but surely there must be something else to the book than this for Heathcliff and Catherine to have endured as iconic, tragically romantic figures who have inspired so many prior film adaptations, not to mention a song by Kate Bush. (Bob Ignizio)

We wonder what fans of Tolkien and the Brontës will make of this story from the latest adaptation of The Hobbit as reported by io9:

[Graham] McTavish [who plays Dwalin] contributed an interesting bit of Dwalin lore. He recalled that Emily Brontë had two hounds named "Grasper" and "Keeper," and decided that they would make great names for Dwalin's twin axes. ("That he grasps your soul with one axe and keeps it with the other," adds McTavish.) He suggested it to Jackson, and now the names are inscribed on the axes in Elvish. (Lauren Davis)

Clash Music finds a Brontëite in The Joy Formidable's Ritzy Bryan.

What other authors do you like? Jonathan Franzen, John Niven, George Pelecanos, The Brontës, Steinbeck, Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Bukowski, Samuel Johnson, so many..... [...]
Would you ever re-read the same book? Absolutely, my copies of Wuthering Heights, Just Kids and Great Expectations look well fingered.

More on music and Wuthering Heights as th Kites' Matthew Phillips writes the following in The Huffington Post:

I suppose you must think me a terrible snob, but that would be unfair. Yes, it does irk me that Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights was inspired by a cinematic adaptation, rather than by Emily Brontë's classic novel, but I am not unreasonable. 

And yet more music, in a strange comparison seen in The Daily Cardinal:

But the Internet has condemned us all from proclaiming a pedestal for our favorites. We are no longer entitled to classics.
If these trolls, these haters, these fans had these utilities in 1994 when Nas first released Illmatic, an album hailed as a quintessential classic in the genre as Jane Eyre is to literature, would we have hailed it as a classic then? Now? Absolutely not. (Michael Penn II)

The Staten Island Advance thinks that The Importance of Being Earnest is always a success on stage.

“Earnest” occupies a select shelf, next to Dickens, Austen and the Brontës. All are endlessly renewable and profitable resources. Every generation want to put its mark on these masterworks and no amount of revivals and remakes will ever be enough. (Michael J. Fressola)

TBIvision seems to confirm this although applied to TV:

This comes as the company is aggressively expanding its international business, particularly in the United States. It set up Televisa USA earlier this year and already has a number of projects in production and development including Terminales at ABC Family, Marc Cherry’s Devious Maids for Lifetime, which is based on Televisa novela Ellas son la Alegría del Hogar, and Jane Eyre-style novela La Que No Podía Amar (The One Who Couldn’t Love), which it is developing for broadcast networks. (Peter White)

The Daily News (Sri Lanka) looks at one-book writers, such as Emily Brontë.

Emily Brontë published ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 1847, when she was 29. She fell ill soon after and died just one year later, when she was only 30 years old. A tragedy not only for her family, but to the entire literary world. (Daya Dissanayake)

Fashion advice by the Express & Star:

Checks and plaids are also staples of this style. Hunt out earthy colours and accessorise with a sweeping coat to take to the moors in dramatic Wuthering Heights fashion.

The Galway Independent looks at the actual Eyre family, including a piece of local lore.

Eyre also presented Galway with the beautiful ornamental silver Queen Anne mace in 1712. In 1727, he was attached to the Connacht Circuit and continued to play a part in the corporation, holding the post of Recorder in 1738. When he died in November 1739, his three sons and one of his daughters had already predeceased him. He was buried in the Collegiate Church St Nicholas, where he had erected a monument to his father and mother.
There are other monuments in the church dedicated to the Eyre family. It seems that his wife, Jane, was a very kind and gentle lady who cared for the needy. A monument was erected to this Jane Eyre after her death. At the time she left £300 to the poor of Galway. According to local tradition, she may have inspired the Brontë novel, Jane Eyre. (William Henry)

We wonder if they are connected at all, but if Charlotte Brontë was inspired by real-life Eyres it would have been by the Derbyshire 'branch' of the family.

The Yorkshire Post reports on the campaign against the new housing plans in Haworth by quoting from the Haworth Parish Church press release on the subject. The Church Times has an article for subscribers only on the theft at the Old Bell Chapel in Thornton, and the news is also echoed by The Paris Review and The History Blog. The Daily Mail mentions the Villette reference in Susie Boyt's The Small Hours. Nature has a subscribers-only article on tuberculosis which says that, 'Anne Brontë and, possibly, her sister Emily succumbed at 29 and 30.' Forgotten Bookmarks is giving away some classic books including some Brontës. Unputdownables posts the final review post of its Wuthering Heights readalong.The New Canaan Patch considers Jane Eyre and other classics as mere 'early and well-known romance novels'. Aakkosellinen hakemisto writes in Finnish about Agnes Grey. Adventures in Europe writes about a visit to Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Vegemitevix posts about the connection between Brinham Rocks and Wuthering Heights 1992. Hathaways of Haworth has fascinating posts on Charlotte Brontë's paisley gown, her going-away dress, her corset and a brown gown possibly belonging to Charlotte too.