Jane Eyre in prison

This is a headline from the Guardian: ''Arctic 30' journalist Kieron Bryan says Jane Eyre is helping him in detention'.

The British journalist held in Russia on piracy charges following a Greenpeace demonstration against Arctic oil drilling has told his family that he is coping with his detention by exercising, writing and reading Jane Eyre. [...]
To keep himself busy, she said, Bryan was writing – "letters, thoughts, anything that comes into his mind" – and reading. "He's now finished the only book he has been able to get hold of so far, Jane Eyre, and said he would very much like some more." (Sam Jones)

We don't mean to make light of the matter at all, but of course if there is a book that bears endless rereading then that surely is Jane Eyre.

In the meantime, the Guardian Reading Group is overall unimpressed by Edgar Allan Poe.

It's possible to defend Poe as a pioneer. Here we can see the model of haunted houses ever since. Generations of writers, not to mention special effects teams and film directors, have been inspired by him. Then again, his scary buildings and emotional weather patterns aren't a patch on those described by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights, while his gothic excesses don't compete with those conjured by writers such as Matthew Lewis and Ann Radcliffe half a century earlier. (Sam Jordison)

Advice on teenagers reading Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season on Wicked Local Concord:

Dear Parent, give your reader “Jane Eyre” as a companion piece, whose story seems to be an inspiration for Ms. Shannon – though Brontë still does it best. “The Bone Season” has as much in common with “Jane Eyre” as “Twilight” did with “Wuthering Heights” but I distinctly remember one girl read the latter as a result of reading Twilight, so there’s hope. And, there will be a film of “The Bone Season,” so we’ll see, literally. Color my aura blue. (Fiona Stevenson)

People should really read the Brontës before making sweeping statements about them. From The Africa Report:

The idea of sex, love and marriage being an exchangeable thing is of course not new. In white English culture we got the Brontës literature that equated traditional romantic love with a 'good marriage', which is defined by, guess what, someone with money. You still exchanged sex for money, but politely so. (Sarah Bracking)

Someone definitely missed the whole point of Jane Eyre.

According to New Republic,

In the mid-1800s, the English-speaking world was mad for tales of bigamy—the original spouse either hiding in the attic or just back from the colonies. The culprit was Jane Eyre, which set off a micro-genre of copycat books. (Noreen Malone)

The Wall Street Journal features Rebecca Eaton:

Of course, as the longtime executive producer of PBS's "Masterpiece" (formerly "Masterpiece Theatre") and "Mystery!" Ms. Eaton is thoroughly steeped in all things English—from Big Ben to "Little Dorrit," from Jane Austen to Jane Eyre to Jane Marple to Jane Tennison. (Joanne Kaufman)

BBL (Finland) reviews Charlotta Buxton's book on her four years in Great Britain.

Buxton åker till orter med rykte om hotfulla upplopp som nyheterna också hos oss har rapporterat om, till Bradford, Ripley, Brixton och som en kontrast till mytomspunna ställen som Windsor, Eton, Inverness eller till Haworth, författarsystrarna Brontës hedlandskap, idag en sovande ort där livet flyter lika sakta som förr. (Ingeborg Gayer) (Translation)

ActuaLitté (France) shares the first chapter of 7 femmes by Lydie Salvayre. WatchMojo has a video on Wuthering Heights while Impressions in Ink posts about the novel. The Brontë Parsonage Blog has a post on the recent talk by Kirsty Wark at the Literary Luncheon in Ilkley while the Brontë Parsonage News section features the recent dinner at the Rotary Club of Bradford Brontë where Ann Sumner was a guest of honour. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page shows Charlotte Brontë's very own fragment from Napoleon's coffin.