An ivory quill-cutter

The Telegraph and Argus has a letter from the Brontë Parsonage Museum telling about the latest goings-on:

This morning was spent organising the return of Elizabeth Gaskell’s escritoire (or writing desk!) that we have had on loan from Manchester Museum.
We have also been introducing our new collections intern, Alana to the role. She will be working with staff, including Collections Manager and the Library and Collections Officer for the next six months to gain experience in the museum.
Alana will also be writing this column in future, keeping you up to date on all things Brontë related.
It’s been a busy month. Last week, we were alerted to a Charlotte Brontë letter coming up for sale by auction, the next day! Sadly, we were unsuccessful in our bids as it sold for double the estimated price.
We were disappointed that we couldn’t bring the letter back home to the place where it was written over 150 years ago.
To lift our spirits though, we were thrilled to receive an exciting donation to the collection. An ivory quill-cutter which the Brontë family would have used to sharpen their quills before they put quill to paper!
This was an important tool in the Brontë household and was probably used many times by the young Brontë children to achieve such miniscule handwriting inside their tiny books, and later in life for writing their letters, poems and novels. We will display the quill-cutter from February 2015.
The year 2016 marks 200 years since the birth of Charlotte Brontë and there will be celebrations all over the world.
We have been putting together a list of objects to exhibit at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York to commemorate the bicentenary, which will include a Charlotte Bronte dress, a selection of her artwork, and one of the famous handmade ‘little books’.
The exhibition will travel between the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Parsonage, and finally the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York throughout 2016.
Staff have also been star-spotting in Haworth! Actress Drew Barrymore visited the museum, taking some time out from shooting scenes for Missing You Already, and she was later spotted in the Black Bull, Branwell’s favourite pub!
We also welcomed famous folk singer Maddy Prior who took a guided tour of the museum and came in to the library for a special treasures session.
Last Saturday we held a water colour painting workshop at the very atmospheric Ponden Hall. Sue Newby our Learning Officer, who organised the workshop, said: “The painting was really enjoyable and people produced some lovely work, but the highlight of the day might just have been the incredible home- made cake made by our host Julie Akhurst!
“Ponden Hall is such an inspiring environment for any creative activity that we do hope to repeat it in the future; in fact we have a writing workshop booked for October 25 run by Hebden Bridge based author Anne Caldwell.”

Rachel Hore tells about her struggles when young in The Independent:

As a conventional teenage girl of the 1970s dressed in Laura Ashley prints, I had little knowledge of feminist texts and found those I had come across beyond my sheltered experience. At the same time, nothing infuriated me more than some male of my acquaintance asserting that women were intellectually inferior to men.
Where were the great female musical composers?, they'd ask, as if this nailed the matter. The great female artists? I'd struggle to suggest examples. At least when it came to literature I could say Jane Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot, but these names were still only a handful and I didn't know enough history to commandeer a fuller answer. 

Daily Press interviews Jerry Lewis:

Daily Press: A generation of people grew up on your comedies – films like "The Nutty Professor," "The Disorderly Orderly" and "The Sad Sack." Groundbreaking comedies. Is there one film in particular that stands out as your own favorite?
Lewis: "Wuthering Heights" … oh, you mean my films! "The Nutty Professor" is the one that is the most special. (Mike Holtzclaw)

The Independent describes a more recent take on Wuthering Heights--Peter Kosminsky's 1992 version--as 'fitfully powerful'.

iDigital Times brings up a relevant point in connection with that:

... it’s been decades since Hollywood has tackled “Moby-Dick.” The book has a deserving reputation for its thematic density and the tendency of movie adaptations to treat the “Moby-Dick” dialogue like Shakespeare and its metaphors like lectures.
It’s a strange problem to have, since most major books end up getting a Hollywood adaptation every ten years or so. Just look at Jane Austen, Hamlet, “The Great Gatsby,” or even “Wuthering Heights.” (Andrew Whalen)

Palatinate discusses imaginative play and mentions the young Brontës:

Imagination has to be nurtured. Otherwise, we will all use it with minimal effort, just like we do with our back muscles. But regular exercise is not enough, a good diet is necessary too: feed yourself with words and images and your imagination will be fine. The lives of the three Brontë sisters show how play and imagination are intertwined, and how imagination can develop if it is allowed to follow the right course. Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell (a painter) created stories as children, fashioning the African kingdom of Glass Town and the Empire of Angria and the fictional continent, Gondal. They were particularly stimulated by their father who gave them books and toys to immerse themselves in. (Natalia Dutra)

The Drum comments on Yorkshire being chosen for the Tour de France Grand Départ.

Unlike boasting of being the birthplace of the Brontë sisters or David Hockney, or falling into low-level factionalism around a cricket team or quality of beer, La Grande Boucle conferred a rare honour, one which Yorkshire had been granted only by outsmarting the likes of Edinburgh, capital of a near-nation. (Lewis Blackwell)