We got off that moor, but not entirely safely

Keighley News reports the efforts of the Brontë Society president to improve links with Haworth community:

Brontë Society president Bonnie Greer’s latest efforts to improve links with the Haworth community have been welcomed by the parish council chairman.
Cllr John Huxley said he hoped the moves would benefit both the Brontë Parsonage Museum – which the society runs – and other organisations in the village.
He welcomed Ms Greer’s call for Haworth residents who were members of the Brontë Society to stand for voluntary posts on its ruling council.
He said: “I applaud the society for opening doors to that sort of opportunity. I know there are people in the village who are interested in the Brontës.”
Ms Greer had invited nominations for council vacancies from people with skills in tourism/visitor attractions, press/journalism/marketing, IT/digital technology, and publishing.
Cllr Huxley said: “There are people in the village who possess those skills. There’s no reason why they can’t join.
“I welcome that the Brontë Society recognises the local community has a part to play in maintaining the Brontë heritage.”
Cllr Huxley was delighted that museum’s new operations manager was actively recruiting local people for a committee which would organise events to celebrate the 200th anniversaries of the Brontë sisters’ births.
He was also pleased that museum representatives were again attending tourism group Brontë Partnership. He said their expertise would be invaluable on other committees discussing Haworth issues.
He added: “That’s the sort of thing we want – to see the Brontë Society branching out.”
Ms Greer made her rallying call to Haworth residents in a New Year address to members following a difficult year for the society, which saw wrangles over the organisation’s future direction and departures of leading figures.
She told members: “We must bring our membership age down in order to ensure that our beloved Society and Museum continue into the 21st century.” (David Knights)

The Times' Hearing is Believing presents an audiobook of Wuthering Heights, read by Helen Rumbelow:

Not unlike the storms that rage through Wuthering Heights, Brontë’s masterpiece is a book of such wild passion that one reading will haunt you. I feel about it as Cathy feels about her “dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind”.
Wuthering Heights is, like its hero Heathcliff, dark, mad and flawed but it makes you feel. It’s less book than weather. We got off that moor, but not entirely safely. I tell the story of Cathy as a ghost story to scare our children.

The Times of India asks several college students about their favourite British classic:

Wuthering Heights - I was bred on books and a wide range of classics, from Austen to Flaubert and Dostoevsky to Douglas Adams, were staples in my literary diet.
Yet, there is always that one book you never grow out of -the one that, in your mind, is beyond criticism or comparison. For me that book is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. It was a gift from my mother on my 13th birthday and I can honestly say that among all books I have read before and since, it remains unmatched in its passionate abandon and raw portrayal of love. At 25, my romance with this heart-wrenching classic continues! I still go back to it after a tough day. I still root for Heathcliff. And I still end up in tears every time. But isn't that exactly what a classic is? Beyond the limits of age, time and space?  (Adharshila Chatterjee)

Varsity lists literary icons:

The last character who sits in my Hall of Greatness is Antoinette Cosway from Wide Sargasso Sea. Once she’s married to an Englishman for her dowry and shipped away from her home in Jamaica, she’s known as Bertha Mason, appearing as the archetypal ‘mad woman in the attic’ in Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel gives her a voice, and it’s moving and passionate, transforming her from a ghost into a woman who lets us explore important gender issues and society’s attitudes towards mental health. (Noa Lessof Gendler)

The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Minae Mizamura's A True Novel English translation:

In the early pages of both English and Japanese classic novels by women, individuals' characteristics and rank on the social scale are made clear – often in terms of appearance, manners and "breeding" – and they behave in character throughout the story. What has made long, intimate narratives like those of Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Sei Shonagon and Lady Murasaki compelling for millions is what their characters, gagged by social conventions, do or don't reveal about themselves. (...)
Fumiko for most of her life has been a maid for two well-off Japanese families and is accepted as a family member - up to the point when it comes to inheriting their property. Her benefactor is Taro, the part-Chinese runt of a poor family who is taken in by Fumiko's employer and rises in the world, becoming a successful businessman in the United States. He's talented, temperamental, taciturn and besotted with the daughter of one of the families, an airhead who contemptuously dismisses him. Taro pines for her for 15 years. He is the enigmatic successor of Darcy and Heathcliff, with a hint of Jay Gatsby. (Alison Broinowski)

Southern Daily Echo reviews again Maskers Theatre Company's take on Lucy Gough's stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights:

This literary classic is an adventurous choice, but then Maskers are not noted for playing it safe and director Paul Green hopes that the ‘audience would experience the show, rather than just be spectators’.
George Attwill’s performance was a real tour de force as the original angry young man, Heathcliff, anguished in his love for the capricious, tragic heroine, Catherine Earnshaw.
Lydia Longman gave a strong performance, before and after her demise that condemned the spurned Heathcliff to a living hell. Sarah Russell was also excellent, her West Yorkshire accent appearing totally authentic as the servant, Nelly.
Jonathan Marmont was an emotional Hindley Earnshaw, struggling to protect his sister and, in a very talented cast, I liked Georgia Humphrey’s lively portrayal of young Cathy Linton.
The minimalist set, atmospheric lighting and effects all contributed to making this a show that hits the heights and should satisfy the Emily Brontë purists. (Alan Johns)

In the same newspaper an article which mentions the possibility that creativity and genetics are more than related says that:

A lot of previous work has showed a strong effect for the inheritance of intelligence but if the associations identified by this study are robust, they are like a trail of crumbs — follow them, and we might be able to work out how those markers affect the behaviour of genes, how those genes affect cells, what those cells then do, and on up the line to find out how families who may share those markers, the Brontës, the Hemingways, the Day-Lewises, make magic happen. (Christine Kenneally)

The Herald seems to see in Ronny Deila, the current manager of Celtic F.C., a modern Heathcliff:

This week Ronny Deila has largely confined himself to Lennoxtown, rambling at the foothills of the Campsies like some kind of latter day Heathcliff, though one determined to find a happy ending. Stein, in contrast, is the ghost at the feast. (Hugh MacDonald)

Bustle has a list of possible Victorian Literature Valentines:

Everyone likes a man from the wrong side of the tracks (or the moors, whatever). He might not have been involved in the most functional relationships, and he’s admittedly rough around the edges, but there’s still something attractive about Heathcliff’s passion. Warning, though, he’s not one I would turn to for a “happily ever after.” (Shaun Fitzpatrick)

The Telegraph explores the beauties of Dominica:

Roseau, frankly, could do with a little rescuing. Amongst its crumbling buildings is the house, now in private hands, where the author Jean Rhys, best know for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, lived as a child. (Nigel Tisdall)

The Monterey Herald discusses the artistic reworkings of material books:

It also reminds me of my parents’ childhood books I have stored in stacked cardboard boxes in the garage, like my dad’s “Peter Rabbit,” “Oz” and “Big Little Books,” or my mom’s copies of “Jane Eyre” and Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” [Lisa] Occhipinti [author of The Repurposed Library] inspires me to retrieve those beloved books from the cold, damp garage to preserve and conserve them, and perhaps even display them. (Tina Baine)

Biba Magazine (France) talks about the best novels about love:

Si vous n'avez pas encore lu "Jane Eyre" de Charlotte Brontë, n'hésitez pas à plonger dans ces pages magnifiques pour découvrir l'histoire d'amour passionnée entre l'héroïne Jane Eyre et Edward Rochester dans l’Angleterre du XIXe siècle.  (Translation)

El País (Uruguay) interviews the writer Dennis Lehane:

¿Qué escritores lo inspiran? (Gonzalo Palermo)
—Richard Price, un escritor contemporáneo, es probablemente la mayor influencia que tengo. Tambén James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, Graham Greene, James Ellroy, Pete Dexter, Edith Wharton, las hermanas Brontë, William Kennedy y Raymond Carver. Admiro a Cormac McCarthy y a George Pelecanos, Toni Morrison y Daniel Woodrell. (Translation)

El Cultural interviews another writer, Gustavo Martín Garzo:

Antes todo se mezclaba en las casas. En una habitación moría una persona y luego nacía un niño, se refugiaba una loca, como en Jane Eyre, o se encontraban dos novios por primera vez. Todas las casas siguen teniendo, al menos simbólicamente, una habitación cerrada que tiene que ver con la desgracia. Ese es el mundo que debe explorar la literatura. (Fernando Díaz de Quijano) (Translation)

St George's News reminds us of the current Brigham's Playhouse production of Jane Eyre. The Musical in Utah;

Finally, a curious account by a Jane Eyre living in Malta:

It was very interesting reading about the Brontë sisters and Haworth as I revisited the village last June. We used to live quite near before I left home.
It was very amusing because I went with my sister, Jane Eyre, and after she signed the visitors’ book at the parsonage, American visitors kept asking her for her autograph! The hotel we stayed in even gave her copies of Charlotte Brontë’s birth certificate and her parents’ marriage certificate.
For my 70th birthday, my sister, Jane, and cousin came over for a holiday and brought as a gift my family tree, which goes back to 1573 and every generation has a Jane Eyre – apparently Eyre is a Viking surname. (Elaine Zerafa in The Times of Malta)