The Case of the Mysterious Tweet Hacking

Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South has been republished in the Penguin English Library collection and The Observer talks about it:

Dickens was apparently infuriated by its lack of focus, only for Gaskell to respond by cunningly reintroducing edited chapters later. It's not exactly original, either – there's more than a doff of the cap to Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, and suggestions that it's an industrial Pride and Prejudice certainly hold some water. (Ben East) 

The Boston Globe interviews Alison Basford, member of the Boston Ballet Company:

What kind of books do you generally like?
I like mysteries and English literature, especially anything by Jane Austen. “Pride and Prejudice” is my all-time favorite book. And I love Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” Agatha Christie is the top mystery writer for me. I’ve read some of her books three times. (Amy Sutherland)

We read in The Telegraph (Middle Georgia) the story of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, a disabled teenager who wrote a diary between 1860 and 1865 providing specific details about, among other things, the Civil War. It seems that

The teen was highly educated and well-versed in classic literature from the work of Charles Dickens to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” (Liz Fabian)

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2012/12/15/2286425/macon-boys-diary-provides-perspective.html#storylink=cpy

The Scotsman is concerned about love letters and emails:

Earlier this year, the British Library published the first collection of love letters reproduced in the writers’ own hand. Love Letters: 2,000 Years Of ­Romance allows the reader to vicariously experience giddy affairs, happy marriages and unrequited lusts. It includes De Profundis, the 50,000-word letter written from Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, and several from Charlotte Brontë to Professor Constantin Héger, the teacher with whom she was infatuated. (Dani Garavelli)

Keighley News reports the "Saving Haworth" Tweeter mystery case:

A Twitter account set up to block a Haworth housing estate has caused confusion after advocating concreting over the village’s green fields.
‘Save Haworth’ appeared on the social networking site in October, shortly after Bradford businessman Perves Abbas announced plans to build 320 homes on Weavers Hill.
Seemingly opposing the plans, its tweets rallied objectors and posted stories from the Keighley News that included objections from groups such as the Brontë Society and Haworth Parish Church.
It quickly became one of the biggest voices of objection, despite remaining faceless.
But last week the poster appeared to have had a change of heart, with tweets offering support for the scheme and claiming Haworth needed more houses and fewer green spaces. Objectors have called the apparent U-turn “sinister”.
Mr Abbas said last month he was days away from submitting a planning application for 120 houses on the field. If approved, they would be followed by a further 200 houses.
Save Haworth tweeted: “Application for 320 houses on Weavers Hill should be granted. Greenfields need to be turned into housing estates.”
Another urged people to back Mr Abbas’s plans, to which the businessman replied: “Thanks for your support.”
Shortly after these posts, opponents went online to get to try and get to the bottom of the mystery, but the account was deleted, leaving residents and the applicant himself scratching their heads.
Opponent Tim Curtis said: “I guess it’s been hacked. Very sinister if so.”
When asked if he knew who was behind the tweets, Mr Abbas said: “I don’t know who it was. I was surprised myself. They were against the plans and now they support it. I was astonished.”
Christine Went, of the Bronte Society, said: “When it was originally brought to my attention, I thought someone must have hacked into the account, but if it had been it’s likely whoever was behind it would have explained things by now.
“Something really strange is going on around here.”
Mr Abbas has also revealed the first stage of his housing plan will be reduced from the 120 houses originally planned to fewer than 100. This change in scale was behind the delay in officially submitting it, but he says an application is imminent.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch recommends Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy:

Among the most beloved of 19th-century British novels is Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” and Margot Livesey reimagines the tale in “The Flight of Gemma Hardy”(464 pages, Harper, $25.99), which includes elements of Livesey’s life in a novel that transports the reader into a gripping, affecting and ultimately healing world.
Livesey, a native of Scotland who now teaches at Emerson College and lives near Boston, has created a story of flight, but in that flight, young Gemma soars. And Livesey, the acclaimed author of seven previous novels, aims for and reaches the skies in this work of love. (Jay Strafford)

The Boston Globe discusses the Common Core affaire and remembers that Charlotte Brontë is part of it; Re-Visioning the Brontës Conference talks about Blake Morrison's play We Are Three Sisters; Un Refugio per I Lettori (in Italian) and De àle pustoaicelor (in Romanian) post about Jane Eyre; Individual Reading imagines a different ending for Jane Eyre; Ingos England-Blog (in German) posts about Haworth and the Black Bull; Jenny's Journey has read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; The Blank Page and Hakuna Matata! review Jane Eyre 2011.