In My Mind, I Was on the Moors

The Telegraph & Argus talks about the walks and talks which the Brontë Parsonage offers to its visitors (and publishes several pictures of the Brontë Parsonage Museum learning assistant Hermione Williams walking the moors)

Free guided walks taking in landscape which inspired the literary sisters are being held every Wednesday afternoon throughout this month.
And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, free talks are covering topics ranging from Patrick Bronte's role in the village to early responses to the siblings' writings.
There are also family workshops, which focus on Moorland in Miniature tomorrow, and wax painting on Wednesday, both from 11am to 4pm.
Sue Newby, education officer at the museum, said: "Like everyone else, we were really proud here at the parsonage to see Yorkshire looking so beautiful when the Tour de France arrived.
"This inspired us to focus on the landscape as a theme for our summer and autumn activities. These include craft workshops for families and short guided walks up on to Penistone Hill every Wednesday in August.
"As well as looking at the history of Haworth in the Brontës' day, we are also enjoying the heather coming to bloom upon the moors and exploring the impact the local landscape had on the sisters' writing." (Alistair Shand)

The news of next year's opening of the Norton Conyers attic, allegedly the source of Thornfield's Hall attic in Jane Eyre, is discussed by Judy (without Richard) in The Daily Express:

For me, it's the perfect women's novel; the tale of a poor orphan despised and bullied by her rich relations and then sent away to an horrific charity school for parentless girls. (...)
Hurrah! Jane Eyre is a wonderful, passionate and deeply sexy novel, all the more so because of its understated nature, adhering to the conventions of the time. I always think the Brontë sisters novels make Jane Austen's seem bloodless, witty though they are.
And now it has emerged that Brontë was inspired to write Jane Eyre after a visit she made to an ancient stately home in 1839. The mansion was Norton Conyers in North Yorkshire. (...)
At the top of this narrow and precarious stairway is a tiny stone garret with a single porthole-shaped window. The space was nicknamed Mad Mary's Room. It looks appropriately sinister and austere and Charlotte Brontë was said to have been "very taken" with it.(...)
I love to think of her travelling back to the vicarage she shared with her siblings in Haworth, fleshing out the details of my favourite novel in her head. I do wonder about Mad Mary, though. Who was she? Why was she locked away in the attic? What did her family (her husband?) have to hide? Next year, Norton Conyers will be open to the public. I can't wait to see that gruesome garret. was told the story of a mad woman who had once been kept in a secret attic in the house.

Harvard Magazine celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library:

Librarians are helping faculty discover and deploy letters penned by Lord Byron, ornamental maps of 19th century Japan, the papers of the Beecher-Stowe family, miniature books by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë—and are facilitating online access to these collections to learners across the globe. Libraries are home to a goodly company that grows greater by the day—happy 100th birthday, Widener. (Drew Faust)

Jonathan Kay on Postmedia News recalls some of his favourite audiobooks:

In some cases, a great narrator can breathe so much energy into a true literary classic that it grips you as much as any bestselling potboiler. One of my all-time favourites is Patricia Routledge's 14-hour, unabridged reading of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, in which she summoned up the windswept Yorkshire wilderness with dark undertones and a stunning range of accents. The highway stretched in front of me. But in my mind, I was on the moors.

We wonder if the writer Alena Graedon will do as we says in The Globe and Mail and if her opinion about Jane Eyre will change:

What agreed-upon classic do you despise?
I have a love-hate relationship with Jane Eyre, which I had to read several times in college even though I wasn’t an English major. What a tour de force it is, maybe especially given the social and cultural context in which it was written. But I get a little frustrated with it, too – this formative, paradigmatic example of a literary trope that I have a hard time with: the wounded woman rescued by a man. It’s a much more complicated story than that, of course. I should probably give it another try.

The New Yorker on the eternal question. Genius is made or born:

The debate over the nature of creativity is an old one: Is creative talent, be it novelistic, musical, or artistic, something that you’re born with, or is it something that anyone, with practice and dedication, can acquire? Anecdotally, the first option presents a strong case. The Waugh family produced three generations of novelists: Arthur, then Alec and Evelyn, then Auberon (Evelyn’s son). From the affair between H. G. Wells and Rebecca West came the novelist Anthony West. There are the Dumases (Alexandre, père and fils), the Rosettis (Gabriele and children Christina and Dante Gabriel), the Brontës (Emily, Charlotte, and Anne), the Jameses (Henry and William), the Amises (Kingsley and Martin), the Millers (Arthur and Rebecca)—the list continues to the present.  (Maria Konnikova)

The Pakistan Daily Times explores the figure of the composer Lata Mangeshkar. One of his credits (with Mohammed Rafi and  Asha Bhonsle ) is Dil Diya Dard Liya 1966:

Director AR Kardar then went for the movie ‘Dil Diya Dard Liya’ adapted from ‘Wuthering Heights’ in 1965. Personally I was very sorry that this beautiful Dilip-Waheeda Rehman, Shyama and Pran starrer movie did not meet commercial success despite that it was a beautiful movie. Though Muhammad Rafi’s ‘Koi Saagar Dil Ko Behlata Nahin’ based in Raag Janasamohini/shubha Kalyan stands out as the best song of the movie but I like ‘Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aai’ by Lata better as it is a haunting melody. A lovely song with modern treatment ‘Kaya Rang-e-Mehfil Hei Dildaram’ by Lata needs mention. (Dr Amjad Parvez)

This is a new kind of modern journalism. Let's go to an online forum (not even from your newspaper, any would do) and look for some really angry people about no matter what. Daily Mail comments on Mastermind's alleged gender bias and quotes from the BBC’s own Points of View Messageboard:

‘You should take a look at the works of Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and the Brontë sisters if poetry is your thing, and just to get you started.’

Regrettably the Emily Brontë portrait displayed on the article is not really Emily, no matter what Google Images says.

Focus Taiwan quotes Yunlin County Magistrate Su Chih-fen saying about a new local museum:

She touted the museum as the Taiwanese version of the remote moorland farmhouse named "Wuthering Heights" that serves as the backdrop of the novel of the same name by British writer Emily Brontë.
Equally as isolated as Wuthering Heights, the Taiwan Taisi Haikou Life Museum rises up on the seashore in a beautiful panoramic setting, Su said. (Yeh Tzu-kang and Lee Hsin-Yin)

Movies.com lists the best movies based on 'novels you had to read in school'. Among them, Jane Eyre 2011:

On paper, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a moving mysterious romance that paints a fascinating portrait of the title character as she discovers both love and herself. For the most part, director Cary Joji Fukunaga follows those beats pretty closely, but he smartly shoots the whole thing like a horror movie. Layering mood and atmosphere on top of this frequently told story feels electric. There's no need to update the setting or radically change the characters to make Jane Eyre feel completely fresh. All it takes is a filmmaker with a vision. (Jacob S. Hall)

An alert from Austin, TX:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Slaughter Lane
Afternoon Tea with Jane Eyre 2011
Saturday, Aug 16, 2014
4:00pm
Theater #7

All tea is organic and provided by Austin's own Zhi Tea.

When Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, girlfriend was not messing around. This 19th century masterpiece explores everything from feminism to religion through the eyes of Jane Eyre, a girl who has known great suffering and poverty. Fortunately for her, she also gets to know the tortured Mr. Rochester, and an epic, thrilling romance ensues.

Your ticket includes tea and treat service.

Fox Home posts about Shirley;  Teen Vortex and Give a Hoot, Read a Book review Jane Eyre; Crowdfunding Case Studies analyses the success of the webseries The Autobiography of Jane Eyre.