The Brontë Season is made up of: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, the Gothic story of a penniless young governess, met with immediate success when first published. The eponymous Jane takes up service in creepy Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself at the centre of a haunted cover-up-conspiracy with the dashing-yet-devilish, Mr Rochester. Will they live happily ever after? Will their worlds come crashing down around them? It's a Brontë, so be prepared for both!
Emily Brontë's emotionally gripping Wuthering Heights is, without a doubt, one of the most tragic and infamous love stories ever told. As the most introverted and reclusive of the sisters, Emily's personality remains a mystery.
But as they say, 'still waters run deep' and even if you've never read a word of the Brontës in your life, you will have at least heard of Heathcliff and Cathy and their passionate-yet-destructive love that transcended even death. This production will leave you covered in goosebumps and reaching for the nearest copy.
Anne Brontë, the least well-known (and vastly under-appreciated) of the sisters wrote the most shocking of all the Brontë Tnovels put together, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
The re-opening of
Elizabeth Gaskell's house in Manchester next Sunday, October 5 is in
The Telegraph, with special focus in the garden restoration:
Sitting in her usual writing spot in the dining room, overlooking the garden of her Manchester home, Cranford author Elizabeth Gaskell is in a "doleful mood".
The chrysanthemums she has been "nursing up into bloom this past summer were carelessly left out-of-doors this past night & have been frozen to death", she confides in a letter to her friend, the American author and art professor Charles Eliot Norton, in October 1859.
It is a mishap that, 155 years later, the gardeners at 84 Plymouth Grove will hope to avoid as they bring Gaskell's flowerbeds back to life. (...)
Elizabeth was known to her family as 'Lily' so it is fitting the garden will include lily of the valley and martagon lilies, while visitors in spring should see a "host of golden daffodils" similar to those made famous by the poet William Wordsworth, who Gaskell met. Just as Charlotte Brontë noted how "a whispering of leaves and perfume of flowers always pervaded the rooms" through the open windows in the summer of 1851, so the new garden has been designed with scent in mind.
The Manchester Historic Buildings Trust has restored the Grade II* listed villa, where Still parties will be allowed in. When I visit, Sir James leads the way with a hand-held searchlight. (Ruth Addicott)
The Lytham St Annes Express talks about a local presentation of the latest book by
Victoria Hislop:
Victoria told of the background to The Sunrise – set in Cyprus at the time of the island’s partition in 1974 – as well as revealing details of her favourite authors and books – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
The Washington Post reviews
Daphne du Maurier and her Sisters by Jane Dunn:
This study of the three du Maurier sisters is part of a trend that involves suggesting, with varying degrees of subtlety, that the lesser-known siblings of superstars are the equals, or in some respect even the superior, in talent. This trend was slyly mocked by the witty Oxford novelist Barbara Trapido, who titled her debut “Brother of the More Famous Jack,” upending the relative renown of artist John Butler Yeats and his infinitely more famous brother the poet William Butler Yeats.
In the three decades since Mrs. Trapido had her targeted laugh about this phenomenon, we have heard a great deal about Vanessa Bell being at least as worthy as her sister Virginia Woolf, to say nothing of William Michael versus Dante Gabriel Rossetti or the ancestresses of this whole enterprise, Anne rather than Charlotte or Emily Brontë. Author of a dual life of Bell and Woolf and a study of the royal cousins Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, British biographer Jane Dunn readily concedes that “a bevy of sisters is more than the sum of its parts, and it is to this protean relationship that I, as a biographer, like to turn.”
It’s no accident that the three Brontë sisters crop up early in Miss Dunn’s interesting if flawed study of Angela, Jeanne and Daphne du Maurier. For one thing, Daphne du Maurier, as Miss Dunn writes, “was fascinated by the Brontë siblings and identified with them all, but she jokingly hoped that she and her sisters might emulate Charlotte, Emily and Anne one day, if only she could get her artist sister to write, too.” By artist, she means painter and thus her younger sister Jeanne, whose portrait of Daphne reproduced in this book reveals her to have been talented if not overly burdened with originality of style. (...)
Then there’s her imagination, as formidable as any writer’s, her artistic fearlessness and fierce independence that gave her writing a power and an originality that few of her contemporaries — and certainly not either of her sisters — could approach. In this, she is the equal of Emily Brontë or Mary Shelley, except that, unlike them, she did not produce just one masterpiece like “Wuthering Heights” or “Frankenstein.” (Martin Rubin)
The Star (Malaysia) interviews the writer
Jessie Burton:
Who are your three favourite authors?
Of all time? Charlotte Brontë, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood. (Verity Watkins)
And
USA Today talks with another author, Susan Vaughan:
Why RS (Romantic Suspense)?
I grew up reading mysteries, first Nancy Drew, then authors my mother read, Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner, for example. I've always loved the tension and the puzzle. Then I discovered Gothics like Jane Eyre and books by Mary Stewart and Phyllis Whitney and fell in love, so to speak, with the romance aspect as well. I love writing romantic suspense because it throws the hero and heroine together under extraordinary circumstances and pits them against a clever villain.
The Spectator reviews
Churchill’s Rebels: Esmond Romilly and Jessica Mitford by Meredith Whitford:
Even ardent Mitfordians must quake at the sight of yet another biography of the sisterhood. There have been more forests felled in the name of Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah Freeman-Mitford than the Brontë sisters. (Mark McGinness)
Cado in Piedi (Itay) asks the writer
Valentina d'Urbano about her favourite books:
Emily Brontë, Cime tempestose - Nella mia classifica personale, Cime Tempestose è la storia d'Amore con la A maiuscola. I tormenti di Catherine e Heathcliff hanno attraversato indenni ormai quasi due secoli e stregato intere generazioni. (...)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre - Intramontabile. Ogni anno assistiamo alla pubblicazione di centinaia di emuli più o meno validi che raccontano con altre dinamiche e in altre epoche la storia tormentata del misterioso Rochester con l'ingenua ma caparbia Jane. Ovviamente, nessuno vale l'originale. Jane Eyre è Jane Eyre. (Translation)
WAZ (Germany) announces the airing, today October 2, of
Wuthering Heights 2011 in
3 Sat:
Wuthering Heights (3 Sat, Do., 22.25 Uhr, TV-Premiere). Berührende Filmneuauflage des Romans „Stürmische Höhen“ von Emily Brontë um die Liebe eines Waisenjungen zur Stiefschwester. (Translation)
WiseFreak posts about
Wuthering Heights;
Pamreader posts about Jane Eyre as passive or strong;
Upcycle Shed has made a
Jane Eyre-inspired wall hanging;
We Are All Fools in Love posts a beautfiul
Jane Eyre 2006 collage.
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