"Strongest Friends of the Soul"

The Kate Middleton hyperemesis gravidarum episode has taken a turn for the worst in the media as you probably know, but there are still some references to Charlotte Brontë's death in the articles:

It is the same condition that historians believe killed Charlotte Brontë. The difference between Kate and Charlotte is that the former has access to the very best care modern medicine can offer while the latter lived at a time when entire families were wiped out by TB and women frequently died in childbirth. (Hilarie Stelfox in The Huddersfield Daily Examiner)

English novelist and "Jane Eyre" scribe Charlotte Brontë officially died of tuberculosis in 1855, but some biographers have speculated that the then-pregnant author actually perished from hunger and dehydration caused by severe vomiting and nausea.
A family friend remarked after Brontë's death that “a wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks,” according to Brontë contemporary Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. (Roxanne Palmer in International Business Times)

The duchess's rare, severe form of sickness has ties to literary history. English writer Charlotte Brontë, author of the Victorian novel Jane Eyre, died in 1855 from what is thought to have been hyperemesis gravidarum. (Jason Gale and Meg Tirrell in Winnipeg Free Press)

Detroit Free Press recommends some gifts:

It's never too soon to start the kids on the classics. In this case, it's "Jane Eyre: A BabyLit Counting Primer" (Gibbs Smith, $9.99). The board book starts with one governess, two trunks, three candles -- and Mommy has a crush on the dashing, but misunderstood Mr. Rochester. Other tales in the series include "Pride and Prejudice," "Moby Dick" and "Romeo and Juliet."

The Boston Globe has an alert for tomorrow, December 10:

Decades ago, as Margot Livesey read over her early attempt at a novel, she realized that her ardent reading of great writers was little in evidence. Questions about literary inspiration were on her mind again as she wrote her seventh novel, “The Flight of Gemma Hardy” (Harper), a reimagining of “Jane Eyre” in 1960s Scotland. Livesey, a Radcliffe Institute fellow this year, will discuss what can be gained and lost by drawing on the works of others in “Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be: Homage, Appropriation, and Influence” at 4 p.m. Dec. 10 in the Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden St., Cambridge. Past Radcliffe Institute fellow Claire Messud, who has a new novel coming out in the spring, will introduce her. (Jan Gardner)

Also in the Boston Globe we find a visit to Emily Dickinson's homestead in Amherst:

The library, with its wood-paneled fireplace and rug woven in soft-colored wools, reflects the family’s love of reading. The museum is undertaking to replenish its shelves with the 3,000 editions of books the Dickinsons owned (most of the originals being at Harvard’s Houghton Library). Among Emily’s favorite volumes — what she called “the strongest friends of the soul” — were Shakespeare, the Bible, the Brownings, and the Brontës. (Diane Speane Triant)

El Litoral (Argentina) explores childhood in Victorian novels, among them Jane Eyre:

En Jane Eyre la protagonista comienza narrando las relaciones tensas con sus parientes más cercanos que la han adoptado. La joven Jane es huérfana y por eso vive en casa de su tía, la señora Reed, junto a sus altaneros primos. Las discordias hacen que la protagonista sea enviada a la institución Lowood. La narración de la tétrica vida en ese sombrío sitio permite que la imaginación de Brontë llegue a una sublime escritura (en donde se logra una perfecta armonía entre lo sentimental y lo oscuro; una composición característica del romanticismo), sólo igualada en la grotesca escena donde aparece la enloquecida y salvaje esposa de Rochester. (Fabricio Welschen) (Translation)

Ronna Benjamin suffered from Gumption Trap when she tried to read Wuthering Heights in high school. In The Huffington Post:

It's why you never started Wuthering Heights in high school and read the Cliff Notes the night before the test. It's the mindset that prevents you from ever starting that wonderful business idea.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch salutes the reopening of the Saint Louis Central Library after its restoration and remembers that some old things have been kept like:

The exterior of the building is highly decorated with carvings, including the shields and names of printers and quotations and names of illustrious authors, such as Goethe, Milton and the Brontës. One, from Thomas Carlyle, says: “In books lies the soul of the whole past time: The articulate audible voice of the past.”  (Jane Henderson)

The Sacramento Bee recommends a visit to the The Great Dickens Christmas Fair & Victorian Holiday Party in Daly City:

But it's not just Dickens devotees; it's readers enamored by the Brontës, Thackeray and Trollope, too. And it's also for people whose only reference point for the era is a yearly dose of Scrooge and Marley's Ghost. (Sam McManis)

The director of the Sacramento Public Library recommends Jane Eyre in the same newspaper:

"I've read 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Brontë at least 40 times. Jane is one of the truest and bravest characters in literature. The story is a metaphor for life." (Rivkah Sass, compiled by Allen Pierleoni)

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/09/5037247/characters-crowd-great-dickens.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/09/5037247/characters-crowd-great-dickens.html#storylink=cpy

A Blytheville Courier News journalist and an assistant professor in Las Cruces Sun-News, both Brontëites;  Bookshelves of Doom, Soñadora Excéntrica (in Spanish) and That Small Reading Addiction review April Lindner's Jane; Obsession with Books interviews Aviva Orr, author of the upcoming The Mist on Brontë Moor; Postcards from Purgatory has read Jane Eyre.