Harper Lee and Emily Brontë: not on the same lists anymore

The literary news of the day is of course the fact that Harper Lee is publishing her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee is now of course dropping from the lists of one-book writers. As Time magazine reminds us,

She’s not the only great one-novel novelist—there’s also Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago), Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), and Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)—but they’re increasingly rare birds in an age when writers feel obliged to lash themselves to produce the maximum possible verbiage, over the longest possible career, at any cost. (Lev Grossman)

Tech Times thinks similarly and lists '6 Authors You Won't Believe Only Wrote One Novel'.

1. Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights (1847)
With sisters Charlotte and Anne also authors, literature was obviously in the Brontë blood. Emily Brontë began her career as a poet, but she only published one novel, Wuthering Heights, in 1847. Though the novel, which chronicles a volatile love affair over the course of two generations, was not immediately revered by critics, it has become one of the most iconic novels of all time. Unfortunately, Brontë died in December 1848 of tuberculosis before she was able to write another novel. (Laura Rosenfeld)

John Sutherland comments on the same thing in The Times. And Take Part looks at the story from another angle as a tweet from Jon Sopel from the BBC referred to Harper Lee as a man.

The literary world has, all too often, been dominated by male voices—which could only have inspired other famous female authors to publish under deceiving monikers. In Victorian England, Mary Anne Evans became known as George Eliot when she penned Middlemarch. The Brontë sisters originally published under the names Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell. Charlotte Brontë explained the sisters' choice by stating that they "had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice." (Ashley Jakubczyk)

A high school student writes about reading Jane Eyre the Norfolk Daily News.

This summer, I picked up a classic book I had been given for my birthday  — “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. Unfortunately, I had already seen the movie adaptation and knew the ending. However, the intricate, detailed language spoke to me a way the movie couldn't. I quickly became swept up in the mysteries of Thornfield Hall. The almost mystical character of Jane Eyre taught me something about achieving a happy ending in life: stay (mostly) calm, believe in yourself, and stick by your morals.  This is a book that is a great read for upper elementary to adult. (Sophie Glaubius)

York Vision shares several Valentine's Day ideas such as this one:

If your date is more into reading than topiary, make an origami flower bouquet from books that remind you of her (think more Wuthering Heights than 50 Shades). (Isabelle Scott)

The Millions mentions Wide Sargasso Sea:

There are novels like Wide Sargasso Sea and Wicked and Mary Reilly that retell stories we know from new angles, and there are whole worlds of fanfiction letting new voices speak, as Anne Jamison’s recent book Fic demonstrates so well. But it’s the voices that speak from the edges of even those stories that interest me most, the further possibilities even retellings create, and the ways our attention might always be split between the story we’re being offered and awareness of those we are directed away from by the necessity of moving ahead. It’s not that we are somehow required to tell every possible story — though perhaps, at its best, social media is getting us closer in its banal, beautiful way — or to tell stories other than the ones we’re personally, mysteriously drawn to tell. But maybe doing better at reminding our readers and viewers there are other stories that might be told instead will encourage more people to tell them, to move the edges into the center, and encourage those in positions of influence to offer a platform without dismissing them as stories “nobody wants” while leading others still to listen to them with more attention. (Steve Himmer)