The courageous Jane at the Wild West (or the kitchen chair at Salvador Dalí's cottage garden)

The Daily Mail gives some curious piece of trivia taken from the TV show QI (Quite Interesting). Apparently:

Charlotte Brontë was the first person to use the terms ‘cottage-garden’, ‘raised eyebrow’, ‘Now, now!’, ‘kitchen chair’ and ‘Wild West’.

To be found in the following novels and chapters:

cottage gardens: Chapter XXXVII Shirley

raised eyebrows: Chapter XIII Jane Eyre

Now, now :Chapter XVIII Jane Eyre

kitchen chair: Chapter  XVIII Jane Eyre  

Wild West: Chapter XXXVI Shirley

The Independent's football section talks about the Burnley Premier League team:

Liverpool’s Brendan Rodgers has made a big statement of belief too, of course, and Southampton will probably field four Englishmen at Swansea. But it is in the surrounds of Gawthorpe Hall on the banks of Lancashire’s River Calder, where the Brontë sisters were once regular visitors, and where Sean Dyche’s players now train, that some of the English talents cast aside by billionaire owners are setting out in the top flight with something to prove. (Ian Herbert)

As a matter of fact, it was only Charlotte Brontë who visited Sir James and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe Hall. Hardly a regular visitor, though. She was there only twice, in March 1850 and after her marriage in January 1855.

Today's Brighton performance of Peter McMaster's all-male Wuthering Heights adaptation is discussed in Sussex Express:

Spokeswoman Emma Robertson said: “McMaster’s all-male, award-winning interpretation of Emily Brontë’s seminal text re-visits the iconic landscapes and characters from Wuthering Heights and places them alongside the stories of the male performers to consider how, almost 200 years after the book was published, the lives and aspirations of men are now different.
“Featuring overly-high drama, romantic violence, a touch of Yorkshire bleakness and a few alternative endings, the performance focuses particularly on Heathcliff’s mysterious disappearance from the moors, and his subsequent return as a man.

Meira Bienstock lists in The Huffington Post courageous literary characters:

Jane Eyre -- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre always has the odds against her throughout the novel. An orphan living with her tyrant aunt and terrible cousins, she is ridiculed daily. After being sent away to school, she becomes close friends to a girl named Helen. However, when Helen becomes terribly ill, Jane sleeps in the same crib, holding her before/as she dies. Staying strong, Jane takes up a position as a governess to the little Adèle at Thornfield Hall. The novel twists as she falls in love with her employer Mr. Rochester, and throughout the novel, their relationship becomes intimate intellectually.
Only, in comes the stunning and snobby Miss. Ingram, and Jane must watch as Mr. Rochester and Miss. Ingram court one another. To cope with the pain and to keep calm, Jane sketches two portraits with crayons: one of them Miss. Ingram (drawn as a lovely woman) and one of herself with the words written underneath, "Portrait of a governess, disconnected, poor, and plain." (Jane Eyre, page 191) She keeps them as a reminder as how she views herself in the face of Mr. Rochester. With this fierceness to keep her love for Mr. Rochester at bay, she holds her head high and keeps her lips sealed tightly unless spoken too. When the word of Miss. Ingram's and Mr. Rochester's marriage reach Jane's ears, she remains composed.

Daphne Guinness in The Independent recalls her days in Cadaqués:

Guinness grew up between the Midlands and Cadaqués, the Spanish town frequented and immortalised by Salvador Dalí. "We lived in a chapel up the mountain – we still do – and he lived in Port Lligat, which was down by the sea," recalls Guinness. "My mother, her first husband was his only pupil, and he was her great mentor. There was also Man Ray, there was also Duchamp – he died when I was one, I wish I had met him... So, there was this idea of there being a kind of haven, away from the dealers, the galleries, all of these things. It was tough then, it is really tough now. It is a fantastic place because it is very difficult to get to, our house is about... it takes about half an hour up a very, very, very winding dirt track and it is a chapel. No water, no electricity, no toys, nothing. So, it was great. Spanish Wuthering Heights." (Alexander Fury)

Ben Bromley describes his play Fishwrap in the The Dunn County News:

Of course, as my nine loyal readers no doubt suspected, “Fishwrap” is hardly a hard-hitting drama. It’s rife with puns, as well as jokes about booze and sex. Hey, it takes place in a newsroom: What do you think we talk about around here, the Brontë sisters’ collected works? (Ben Bromley)

The Huffington Post UK interviews the author Kate Mosse:

My women, I suppose, are a type of woman – but they are a fictional type, they’re not based upon anybody in the real world. I suppose you could say they’re inspired by characters from Emily Brontë, Daphne du Maurier, H. Rider Haggard – these great adventure and gothic heroes are the people who inspire my women. (Natasha Hinde)

Gawker talks about Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca:

But jealousy, not love, is Rebecca's subject. It’s Jane Eyre if Rochester mattered much less, and the mad wife in the attic much more (and if it turned out that poor Bertha Mason had, in her day, given some amazing dinner parties). (Carrie Frye)

Sheila Kohler insists on the parallelisms between Rebecca and Jane Eyre in Psychology Today:

I was struck too by the similarities between this novel and Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” Du Maurier’s shy timid young wife simply steps in for the governess, Jane Eyre. The narrator in Rebecca even starts out as a sort of governess or anyway companion when Max de Winter meets her in Monte Carlo. The mad wife in the attic from “Jane Eyre” is portrayed by the dead Rebecca. Or is it rather the housekeeper, Mrs Danforth, who seems particularly and madly obsessed with Rebecca, who terrifies us the way poor Bertha, the wife who is kept hidden in the attic, frightens the reader? The master of the manor, Mr Rochester at Thornfield is played by Max de Winter in Rebecca in his mansion, Manderley. They are both similarly paternalistic and condescending with their young paramours. Both great houses go up in smoke, literally, at the end, burning not only their properties but also the sins of the masters conveniently for both these female authors: Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier.

Laura Maw complains of the absence of female authors in GCSE set texts in The Huffington Post:

At GCSE, I studied Steinbeck and Priestley. My first year at A-Level, I studied Browning, Auden, Fitzgerald and Hosseini. It was only in the second year that I studied Carter and Brontë as well as Marlowe. Work by female authors took up less than a third of my secondary education space - and unequal gender representation is set to increase.

We read in Hello! Magazine and other news outlets we know how Anne Brontë's Farewell poem was read at the funeral of Dr Antony Kidman (Nicole Kidman's father) yesterday in Sydney, Australia. Book in the Bag reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. nFold posts about Emily Brontë. Finally, Oubliette Magazine (in Italian) posts a life after death interview with the Brontë sisters themselves (who, by the way, could have said something about the arguable choice of portraits used in the post:  the usual spurious suspects and Ann Mary Newton's self portrait passing for Anne Brontë).