Sooty-stoned, slate-roofed terraces climb the hillsides like steps, and the steep main street, with its cafés and pleasantly chintzy gift shops,its bric-a-brac-eries and well-stocked bookshops, has an out-of-hours, out-of-season calm. There's hardly anyone about. At the top, the wet cobbles shine in the lamplight and cats scuttle across the path to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which faces a gloomy churchyard one way and the forbidding moors the other.
We visit it the next day. The sisters spent most of their lives here and it's a treasure house of Brontëana. Here is the black horsehair sofa on which Emily died; here is Charlotte's white wedding bonnet [...]; here is Anne's collection of pebbles, gathered on the beach at Scarborough, the town where she died. Most compellingly, here is a display of the sisters' manuscripts, some in the tiniest handwriting; written in this very house. (Stephen McClarence)
Join us as we celebrate Christmas here at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
We’re taking our inspiration from surrealist artist Charlotte Cory’s exhibition Capturing the Brontës and decorating the house ready for a Victorian Christmas, complete with a traditional tree in the foyer.
Every weekend we’ll be opening early at 10am and staying open until 6pm every Saturday, with a range of Christmassy events to get you in the festive mood!
On Saturday it’s the Steampunk Weekend in Haworth, with stalls, costumes and exhibitions. From 2pm to 4pm we’ll have local storyteller Adam Sargent retelling tales from the Brothers Grimm as you’ve never heard them before (free with museum entry).
And all weekend we’re offering ten per cent off at the museum and in the shop for all of those in steampunk costume.
Tabby, the Brontës’ servant, used to tell the sisters of how the last of the fairies left Haworth with the coming of the mills. They are finally returning with our weekend of fairy-themed activities on November 30 and December 1.
On the Saturday, Tabby will be entertaining visitors all day with tales of the fairies of Haworth, or make your own Christmas fairy at our drop-in craft session from 10am to 4pm. They’re both free with museum entry.
On the Sunday, we have a talk on Victorian fairies in folklore from noon to 12.30pm, or listen to our brass quartet playing Christmas songs from 11am to 1pm, all free with museum entry.
Step back to the Parsonage of Christmases past with our Victorian weekend on December 6 to 8. On the Friday at 7pm, Dickens will be dropping by for carols and a candlelit tour of the house on our Visitorian Christmas Eve (e-mail louisa.briggs@bronte.org.uk to book).
The Saturday is our Visitorian Christmas Day. From 11am to 4pm you can meet our staff in Victorian costume and join in the yuletide fun with a Bronte puppet theatre and carols round the tree.
And the first ever Brontë carol service will take place at 3pm on the Sunday at Haworth parish church, with singing from Haworth Primary School.
The fun continues on December 14 and 15.
We have two wreath making workshops at 10.30am and 1pm on the Saturday (same booking details as above) where you can tuck into some mince pies and mulled wine.
Ilkley Players will be reading atmospheric Christmas passages from your favourite stories from 1pm to 4pm (free with museum entry).
On Sunday you can make those last few Christmas decorations at our drop-in session, from 11am to 4pm, or hear our talk on Victorian Christmas trees at 2pm, both free with museum entry. We look forward to seeing you! (Sarah Browncross)
The Spenborough Guardian recommends visiting the North Kirklees museums:
Oakwell Hall Country Park was is “an excellent facility for families. Touring round the Hall is a ‘must see’ and should not be missed!” And “a visit to the Red House Museum will inform, entertain and ensure a great afternoon out! Devotees of Charlotte Brontë will not be disappointed.”
The Globe and Mail chooses the English translation of
Jane, Le Renard et Moi as one of the Best children books around:
Jane, the Fox and Me
By Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, translated by Susan Ouriou (Groundwood)
Gorgeously tying Hélène’s teenage growing pains to her consoling reading of Jane Eyre: a graphic novel that deals with childhood cruelties without being a “bullying” book – it has much more going on. A real beauty. (Lauren Bride)
Financial Times interviews the writer Amy Tan:
Which literary character most resembles you?
I would say the young Jane Eyre, before she goes off to be somebody’s wife and caretaker.
According to
Lucky Magazine, Maura Lynch (which is the Senior Beauty Editor) just wants to dress like an Emily Brontë heroine:
“I’ve read Wuthering Heights at least 10 times,” says Lucky senior beauty editor Maura Lynch of the classic novel. “I love its gothic, slightly eccentric tone.” It’s a vibe that’s spilling into her wardrobe this season in the form of hyper-feminine silhouettes, moody floral prints and polished accessories in rich crimson and violet. “I’m all about taking something quintessentially ladylike, turning it on its side and giving it an edge,” she says.
A press release from
Oxfam says:
To help inspire Christmas shoppers as they head to the Oxfam bookshops this festive season, the charity has asked some of its celebrity supporters which book they would choose as their Christmas 'gift to the nation'. (...)
Book lovers Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley chose Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, and The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Monsarrat, respectively.
News.com (Australia) recommends thirty books to read before you are thirty. Among them:
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
Have you ever belted out Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights at karaoke after downing a few too many tequila shots? Of course you have. Well, now you can find out just who the hell Heathcliff is and what the deal is with Cathy. Warning: wear a heavy jumper. Even reading about those windswept moors will make you cold.
The Dallas Morning News remembers how on November 22, 1963 in Dallas:
• Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier, was playing at the Inwood Theatre.
Ryu Spaeth in
The Week remembers why he likes Hugh Grant:
In my case, England is not only a physical space on the globe with a long history, but a place where fictions occur. England is where Walter Hartright once encountered a mysterious woman all dressed in white on the road outside London; where Pip met Miss Havisham and Estella in a dilapidated old house; where Heathcliff and Catherine fell passionately and tragically in love.
Douglas LaBier recommends in
The Huffington Post that psychotherapists read:
So I encourage them to read such writers as Alice Munro (another Nobel Laureate), Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Melville, to name a few. And, of course, Shakespeare and the Greek Tragedies.
How a book survives and passes from person to person?
The Millions thinks about it:
Still, if one puts pure vanity aside for a moment, the process by which a book survives more than a century is a fascinating thing. When I held a copy of Wilkie Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone, or an early American edition of Wuthering Heights, I’d sometimes reflect on the many deaths the book had to avoid on its way to me. It had to be bought, first of all, and not left to linger on a bookstore shelf, and later pulped — or, as is sometimes the case, burned. Then someone had to keep it after the first read, keep the bindings dry, move it from house to house, and later, after that person died, the book had to be inherited, or else sold, instead of thrown away; at the very least it had to be packed in such a way that the book block didn’t warp and the pages didn’t go moldy: all the little deaths to which a hardbound book is vulnerable. (Sam Allingham)
Meridian Booster talks about the local author Kelsey Greye:
Greye was born and raised in Lloydminster and has always been an avid reader. Two of her favourite authors are Charlotte Brontë and Agatha Christie. (Simon Arsenau)
Novelicious interviews the auhtor Samantha Tonge:
What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
It would have to be the Sophie Kinsella Shopoholic series. Whilst I’ve read lots of Austen and Brontë classics, and used to love Maeve Binchy, my heart lies with the witty, accessible writing of the chick lit genre. I am currently loving the latest Bridget Jones book.
Keighley News recalls that Sally Wainwright's iss penning a biopic about the Bronte family for the BBC; A reader of
The Chicago Tribune shares that at her wedding, her vows came among others from Charlotte Brontë;
AV Maniacs reviews the Blu-ray edition of Jane Eyre 1944.
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