Mary Taylor's church

Well, this is sad. As the Spenborough Guardian reports,

A Grade II listed church with connections to the Brontë family must raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for vital refurbishment work.
St Mary the Blessed Virgin church in Gomersal, which was built in 1851, is suffering from dry rot, floods, leaks and needs new guttering, draining and masonry work.
Mary Taylor, lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, is buried in the Churchyard. Mary inspired the character Rose Yorke in Charlotte’s novel Shirley.
Vicar of the church, the Rev Karen Nicholl, said: “We were shocked about how much needed doing and how long it is going to take but we are really getting stuck into it now.
“We have problems with dry rot, numerous leaks and floods. Some of the structure would likely become unsafe in the forseable future if not dealt with now.”
Work includes repairing and relaying the roof, replacing the 150-year-old drainage system and guttering, and masonry work.
She said: “The church building has been repaired numerous times and it often seems like a never ending job trying to keep up with the leaks which often happen simultaneously in various parts of the church.”
Ms Nicholl said the work had been broken into three stages. In April work will start on the roof; £93,000 has been awarded by English Heritage and £10,000 from other bodies.
The church is applying for £250,000 from the Lottery Heritage Fund towards the second phase, but more will need to be raised. And money will be needed to fund the third phase.
Ms Nicholl added: “When the building works are completed St Mary’s Church will also hopefully be brought into the 21st century with modern energy saving features including solar panels and effective insulation.
“It is likely to be another three to four years before we look at completion.”
Members are organising events to boost funds.
The first is a concert by York City Gospel Choir on Saturday March 1. Tickets are £8 which includes a glass of wine and light refreshments. Phone 01274 872164. (Lauren Ballinger)

The Rumpus revies Minae Mizumura's A True Novel:

A True Novel is not just a translation in the literal, linguistic sense. It’s a reworking of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights set in mid-20th century Japan and America, which in itself is a massive accomplishment of translation. Wuthering Heights, the estate, is morphed into the summer homes of the wealthy elite in Japan. The book’s Heathcliff, Taro Azuma, comes from post-war Manchuria instead of being an adopted gypsy child. Even the book’s prologue echoes eerily with the preface Charlotte Brontë added to Wuthering Heights after Emily’s death. In it, Charlotte writes that the “immature but very real powers revealed in ‘Wuthering Heights’ were scarcely recognized” and laments the general lack of reception she and her sisters received early in their careers. Mizumura-as-narrator echoes the same concern in her opening to A True Novel, in which she describes “the strong desire to hear a resounding voice from on high telling one that one was indeed destined to write.”
Don’t assume that being inspired by Wuthering Heights limits Mizumura’s work in any way. Mizumura’s greatest act of translation sorcery is to drag Wuthering Heights’ basic plotline into the modern, or to be more accurate, postmodern literature scene. Just as Wuthering Heights is framed by the housekeeper telling the story to the narrator, A True Novel is built layer by layer and then slowly peeled back in the process of Mizumura’s storytelling, echoing other iconic postmodern texts—I was frequently reminded of Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman. (...)
I reread Wuthering Heights shortly before A True Novel. Brontë’s work absolutely adds an additional level of engagement with the text. Rereading Heights was not a completely positive experience—I found myself put off by the lack of sympathetic characters. But that lack seems to allow Brontë to create these incredibly potent scenes between characters, scenes that pulse with torrents of emotion. Mizumura chooses a different route: we sympathize with several of her characters, but they remain just out of our reach, unknowable due to the limited and unreliable layers of narration. This keeps the emotional flare-ups believable and just as evocative as the collisions between Brontë’s characters. Early on, we see a description of Taro dancing: “All I knew was that my body was in his arms, being whirled around the floor at a frightening speed. His own body was tight with pent-up emotion; it felt almost as if he was punishing me.” Like Wuthering Heights, the reserved, formal world around the characters serves to enhance every character’s outburst. Mizumura uses this to her full advantage, creating masterful depictions of love in myriad forms and combinations. (Graham Oliver)

In other news, writer Jasindah Mir reveals to the Authint Mail that she's quite a Jane Eyre enthusiast.

AM: Who is your favorite author?
JM: There are actually many to name. Charlotte Brontë, Fyodar Dostoyevsky and Dan Brown. Brontë’s Jane Eyre was an inspiration for my first novel. (Junaid Nabi Bazaz)

Via Galleycat we have found out about Amazon's selection of 150 love stories to celebrate Valentine's Day. Jane Eyre is there in the 'historical romance' category but we have been unable to find Wuthering Heights, whose proper category, were it included in the selection, should be 'star-crossed love'.

More V-Day stuff, as MSN Entertainment looks at 'the greatest movie romances' and both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are there.

9) "Wuthering Heights"
Those crazy kids Heathcliff and Cathy and the moors and the brooding. Many have tried, but none have done the Brontë novel up quite as aptly as director William Wyler did in 1939 with Laurence Olivier as the savage dude and Merle Oberon as the simpering vain girl who drives him even more nuts than he was to begin with. As wanting-to-be-faithful adaptations go, this is the best. Things get more fun with certain perverse variants, such as Luis Buñuel's desert-set '50s Mexican version, "Abismos de Pasión." And coming this year, maverick British director Andrea Arnold's version, with a black Heathcliff.
38) "Jane Eyre"
The Brontë classic is one of the most adapted novels of any genre and/or era ever, so the challenge here is which movie adaptation to go with. The recent version starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska has its good points, notably the swoony male lead. But Orson Welles in his late-20s prime was pretty damn swoony himself, and the 1943 rendering of the book, with a very apt Joan Fontaine in the title role, has oodles of Hollywood period mood and intrigue to it. 

Teen Ink discusses love.

We all want Jane and Rochester’s passion, but that’s Brontë fiction. The Byronic hero. (Ender2)

The Tartan discusses anonymity on the net:

Anonymity can also remove unwanted connotations that come along with identity. For example, female authors, such as the Brontë sisters of the 19th century, wrote under aliases so that people would take them more seriously. Anonymity is powerful in the sense that it decreases the consequences associated with speaking out and allows people more freedom to say what is on their minds. (Kathryn McKeough)

Milk Made describes a Alexander Herchcovitch fashion show like this:

An unsettling siren of a violin opened Alexandre Herchcovitch, and what began as something like Tim Burton meets Jane Eyre—beautifully unsettling, with frizzy haired models in oversized bug-eyed sunglasses and winklepicker mules conjuring Helena Bonham Carterfiring on all cylinders—started to give you ideas about what that spinster daughter in Grant Wood’s American Gothicmight have been wearing under all that drab paisley. (Rachel Seville)

The Times considers Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights one of the '20 best lyrics'. The Illustrated Man shares a sketch of 'Charlotte Brontë and the dead martian'. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook Page shares Emily Brontë's sketch of Grasper the dog. The Kansas City Public Library reviews Wuthering Heights 1939.