Tour de Yorkshire

Many, many news outlets are reporting that the Tour de France will feature a stage in Yorkshire in 2014. From the Yorkshire Post:

Mr Verity told his French visitors of the varied attractions of “God’s own county”, invoking the names of Yorkshire heroes including Captain Cook, William Wilberforce, Lord Coe, Jessica Ennis, David Hockney and the Brontë sisters.
He said he thought three million people people would line the streets of the county to watch the event.

From BBC News:

Stage two - Sunday, 6 July [2014]
York - Knaresborough - Silsden - Keighley - Haworth - Hebden Bridge - Elland - Huddersfield - Holmfirth - Sheffield

Also reported by The Northern Echo, ITV News, Vélo 101, etc.

Still locally, The Telegraph and Argus has a leading article on the importance of preserving the Brontë birthplace, after yesterday's bad news.

The literary legacy of the Brontë sisters is something this part of the world can be justifiably proud of, and it is a very important part of the heritage of the Bradford district.
It is an integral part of the popularity of Haworth, with the village growing as a tourist destination on the back of associations with the family and the fact their work was inspired by the beautiful scenery.
But the place where Charlotte, Anne, Emily and their brother Branwell were actually born, in Thornton, has not had the same level of prominence, and their cottage on the village’s Market Street has been allowed to be neglected.
Now, the efforts of the Brontë Birthplace Trust to restore the cottage as a museum have sadly been dealt a blow that could mean the Brontë birthplace is lost to the community permanently. [...]
That has left it looking to find a way to make a bid quickly to the estate agents looking to sell the property. The Council has apologised, but surely it is something that officers can look more closely at to see if it can become involved in preserving this landmark for the community, rather than risking it to going into private hands.
Yes, expenditure of public money is very difficult to justify at the moment. But preserving this vital part of our literary heritage is extremely important. And if handled correctly, such an attraction could be seen as an investment, allowing the village to share in the Haworth tourism honeypot, preserving a nationally important historic landmark and helping to regenerate Thornton village at the same time.

Maureen Corrigan discusses the relevance of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's Madwoman in the Attic on WBUR after they have won the National Book Critics Circle lifetime achievement award.

The undercover female tradition that Gilbert and Gubar were talking about was one in which writers as disparate as Austen, Emily Dickinson, the Brontës, Louisa May Alcott and George Eliot used similar themes and images to dramatize the social limitations they themselves suffered as women.

Radio National, in the meantime, discusses John Ross's Orwell's Cough.

Paste Magazine looks at several films to be screened at Sundance. Pity they seem to think that Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë are interchangeable.

Fill the Void The Category: Spotlight
The Sundance Synopsis: Watching Fill the Void is like stepping into a Charlotte Brontë novel set in Tel Aviv’s ultra-Orthodox community. Strict social codes, rabbinical decrees and subtle signifiers govern the way all members interact—especially men and women.
This is the universe of taciturn, 18-year-old Shira, whose cloistered life takes a dramatic turn when her sister dies suddenly, leaving behind a newborn and a bereaved husband. As the camera gently infiltrates Shira’s family’s hushed quarters, so, too, does it keenly observe her private evolution from innocence to self-awareness as she decides whether to take her sister’s husband as her own. The tension between Shira and her brother-in-law is palpable as their vulnerabilities stir under the surface of an emotional chess game neither is prepared for. Burshtein’s universal story of tortured love—told with enormous specificity, nuance, and depth—is transfixing. [...]
The Draw: Like a Jane Austen novel set in a Hasidic Jewish community? Done and done, we’re in. (Michael Dunaway)

The Boston Globe reviews the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but thinks that

Picture source

[Director Rob] Ashford overdoes the atmospherics; when a heavily symbolic storm arrives late in the play, it rumbles and crashes like something out of “Wuthering Heights.’’ (Don Aucoin)

Jezebel features the work of Timothy Leo Taranto, who creates drawings based on the puns of names of literary greats.

Artist Timothy Leo Taranto combines literary greats with literally great puns (???) to create a series of delightfully goofy drawings. Featuring Vonnugget (yum!), Ernest Lemingway (ha!), and, of course, the ever lovely Brontësaurus sisters. It's a dad joke in art form, and I'm nerdily all about it.
I'm thinking if Taranto wanted to do a series, her could expand the dino-puns to include some of the sisters' important works. Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are all ripe for someone punny to rip into. (Laura Beck)

Leituras Brontëanas (in Portuguese), January Magazine and TWRP Historical Roses (featuring a supposed picture of Anne Brontë) all celebrated Anne Brontë's 193rd birthday yesterday. Libros y misterios (in Spanish)  reviews Agnes Grey. Shabnam posts about Wuthering Heights. Bookish Whimsy discusses the 1943 radio adaptation of Jane Eyre. Hywijuk writes about Bertha Mason. Minding Spot reviews Jane Eyre Laid Bare. Pronto (in Spanish) has an article on Jennifer Vandever's The Brontë Project. Finally, a post on Brontë Country on the Re-Visioning the Brontës Conference blog.