The Brontë Birthplace has been sold

Very sad news from Steve Stanworth, Brontë Birthplace Trust chairman:

I can now confirm that this afternoon we received the following information, The Brontë house 72/74 Market Street Has Been Sold And contracts have been exchanged. This has come as a shock , and hot on the heels of the news Bradford Council felt unable to help us to save the Property for the community and Brontë lovers worldwide. We are extremely disappointed and disgusted with the councils attitude. Our meeting this evening at the Blue Boar seemed like a waste of time but the Trust feels we need to continue in our quest to buy the property and appeal to Brontë lovers everywhere to help us raise funds. We need money to prepare a business case for the future purchase. It was felt keenly by the group that we need to remain focused and although the house is now sold, we need to be in a stronger position should the house appear on the market again. We had a petition signed by two hundred local people supporting the bid to buy the house and we hope to keep that support going over the coming months. I as chairman would like to thank all who have contributed to this effort and continue to keep us going. The local press have really helped keep us in the news and raise our profile. 

Truly heartbreaking.

The Glocestershire Echo reviews Hull Truck's production of Jane Eyre.

An atmospheric backdrop of burnt journal pages and books line the modest set as the play opens with Jane Eyre's most famous line: "Reader, I married him."
We meet Jane, beautifully portrayed by Rebecca Hutchinson whilst she is a teacher at Lowood. She soon moves to Thornfield, owned by brooding Mr Rochester, played brilliantly by Andrew Dowbiggen – who also takes on the roles of St John Rivers, Mason, William and John Reed.
The tale of love, loss and redemption unfolds as we see Jane become governess to a little french girl, Adele. Played by Victoria Kay, she provided much of the comedy and light relief throughout the drama as she moved seamlessly between the roles of Miss Temple, Mrs Fairfax, Blanche and Bertha.
And with a clever use of flashbacks throughout, we see Jane's bleak beginnings under the care of Aunt Reed.
There were a few witty lines and just enough emotion as Mr Rochester and Jane were reunited.
Hull Truck captures the essence of Bronte's daring novel. It's made me want to read it all over again. (Helen Rawlings)

KSL thinks that Jane Eyre is one of the '12 fictional characters every girl should know'.

3. Jane Eyre, “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
Every girl should get to know Jane Eyre. Jane possesses a quiet strength and knows her own heart. She never deviates from what she believes in and is willing to work hard. Jane may not be traditionally pretty, but her spirit is gorgeous. Jane is a champion of the downtrodden and a queen of enduring the bad to get the good. (Teri Harman)

Why just girls though? We are sure that next week's list of fictional characters every boy should know won't include it.

Along the same lines, Female24 asked readers to share their favourite fictional characters.

Catherine from Wuthering Heights. She has so much passion, strength, power and love!
Lilian

The Boar debates the literary canon. In favour of it:

What’s the best thing about the canon, though? It inspires debate. Yes, there’s some literature that we all agree is pretty great, but equally there are some things that people heatedly disagree about, and ultimately isn’t that what’s great about fiction? “Is Iago consummately evil?” “Which Brontë sister was really the best?” (Az Butterfield)

The Miami Hurricane, however, reports that Jane Eyre doesn't seem to warrant a university course of its own.

A course dedicated solely to the novel “Jane Eyre” was proposed during the last academic school year.
“Jane Eyre” did not get approved, but Niurka Monteserin, chair of the academic affairs committee of Student Government, continues to lead the Design-a-Course initiative, which allows students to develop their own courses, create a syllabus and teach the class themselves. These are offered as pass/fail courses for one credit. (Lyssa Goldberg and Alexander Gonzalez)

MSNBC publishes an excerpt from Emily Bazelon’s Sticks and Stones which in turn also quotes from Jane Eyre.

Only in the fiction of the era have I found tales of bullying that read like the real-life stories we tell today. Charlotte Brontë, for ex- ample, made her readers feel Jane Eyre’s misfortune by showing her cowering before a vicious older cousin: “He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, not once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near.” 

PressConnect shares the Harpur Cinema spring film lineup at Binghamton University, including

March 8 & 10: “Wuthering Heights” (2011, 129 min.)
Director Andrea Arnold contrasts the passionate forces of Emily Brontë’s brooding novel with the desolate moors and threatening weather of the Yorkshire countryside. As striking is her casting of the first actors of color to play Brontë’s “dark outsider” Heathcliffe (sic) (Solomon Glave and James Howson).
The film will be introduced by professor Tomonari Nishikawa on March 8.

The Hamburger Abendblatt (Germany) reviews the German DVD release.

The Border Mail (Australia) on the film Beautiful Creatures:

[Alice] Englert broods like Cathy from Wuthering Heights, waiting in vain for her Heathcliff to show up. (Jake Wilson)

Audiophile Audition reviews Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte Books 1-4 and Five Individual Lieder ohne Worte – Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano and recalls

Apropos of not much, if you’ve ever seen the 1944 film version of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, you might recall that Jane plays this very piece for Rochester when he asks her for a sample of her musicianship. If what I’ve said about its emotional character is true, Op. 19b No. 1 is the perfect work for her to play, and it’s also perfect in another respect: when Jane Eyre appeared in 1847, Mendelssohn was the most popular composer in England, representing to the fullest the comfortable, conservative aesthetic of the Victorian era. Which is not to denigrate Mendelssohn’s wonderful music or to disregard its impact. (Lee Passarella)

The Houston Press Art Attack features writer Amanda Stevens:

"I'm able to use what I feel like are my strengths in my writings. There's like a gothic flavor to what I'm writing now. And that goes back to sort of my first love was gothic... like Jane Eyre and later writers like Victoria Holt. Atmosphere was so much a part of those books. Atmosphere was like a character and that's what I loved about them and that's what I love about what I'm writing now. I can really sort of get into that dark lush writing and their set in the south so it kinds of lends itself to that." (Crystal Brannen)

The Oman Tribune discusses e-readers and admits that,

To people from the ‘old school,’ it may not be appealing to delve into the ethos of Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights on a digital reader, but more and more books are finding their way into electronic stores.

The Bermuda Sun features Bradford and recalls that Thornton, where the 'novel-writing Brontë sisters' were born is now part of metropolitan Bradford (though not a much-loved place by the powers that be). The Daily  Record focuses on a Piscataway (NJ) student who, among other things, has read Jane Eyre in Mandarin. Filmmaking Review writes about the 2011 adaptation of the novel while Just Another Pretty Farce posts about the retelling An American Heir by Chrissy Breen Keffer. Joie de Lire reviews Aviva Orr's The Mist on Brontë Moor. Fabulous Florida Writers has a guest post by the Jane Eyre Chronicles author Joanna Campbell Slan.