Anne Brontë to the Rescue

Mashable traces a brief history of pen names used by female authors (with nice infographics):

For example, when a 20-year-old Charlotte Brontë sent a selection of her poetry to England’s poet laureate Robert Southey, she received the following response: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life." Thankfully, the future author of Jane Eyre disregarded his advice. Along with her sisters Emily and Anne, she assumed a male pen name under which she released her work. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell and Emily became Ellis Bell.
"They never used their real names on the title page while Emily and Anne were alive," says Emily Auerbach, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Searching for Jane Austen. "But the pen names helped them open the door and at least get a reading." (Yohana Desta)

The Sydney Morning Herald recalls a story of abuse inside Christian marriages:

In the end, it wasn't a helpful minister or a kind friend that first convinced me that I should try to leave my abusive situation. They had no clue of what was going on as I didn't think I was allowed to tell them. I wouldn't even have named my situation as domestic violence at that time, so I didn't think to call the DV hotline. It was a copy of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. I was saved by a lending card to a public library.
My husband controlled much of my media intake, but he never realised that nineteenth century British fiction contained such subversive material, so he let me read it. His downfall was that he reminded me too much of the evil "rake" in the first novel and the psychopathic villain in the second. And despite the brainwashing, I thought that if Anne Brontë (who was a daughter of an Anglican clergyman) could write a novel in Victorian England where the heroine could leave an evil man like that, what was I doing staying with one 150 years later? (Isabella Young)

Amanda Craig publishes a vindication of Anthony Trollope in The Telegraph:

Were you to ask a reader for the name of the greatest Victorian novelist, they might well say Dickens, or George Eliot or the Brontës or Thackeray – and in terms of literary art you might well agree with them. If, however, you were to ask whom they turn to for comfort, entertainment, refreshment and even guidance then the answer, quite possibly, would be Anthony Trollope, the bicentenary of whose birth in 1815 falls on April 24 this year.

The Herald on Sunday reviews the film Catch Me Daddy:

The tradition of violent stories in the North stretches from Wuthering Heights to David Peace's Red Riding quartet (also loosely inspired by real events) and its TV adaptation. Unusually in these stories, so-called heroes are as tarnished as the villains. And today it takes very little licence to depict post-industrial towns as being full of emptiness, anger and misery.  (Demetrious Matheou)

Surf and Charlotte Brontë? It could mix. From Bangor Metro:

Maybe the younger version of myself wasn’t ready to surf, or didn’t need it as much as I did once I was older and had gained so much more responsibility. I still frequently think of my surf week. I have a photo in my office of a woman paddling out on her board, with this quote: “I remembered that the real world was wide and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse.” – Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.”  (Emilie Brand Throckmorton)

The Nation (Sri Lanka) publishes the obituary of the writer and scholar M.B.Mathmaluwe:

His essays show a deep interest in the Buddha Dhamma. Its missionary spirit and its pre-Mahindian influences in Sri Lanka. His essays range from the sacred to the profane. His writings on Robert Frost, D.H.Lawrence, Emily Brontë, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Martin Wickremasinghe and other giants of literature show a refreshingly original approach. (Tissa Devendra)

The subtleties of the German language in The Huffington Post:

Im heutigen Englisch gibt es natürlich keinen Unterschied zwischen förmlicher und informeller Anrede: für „Du", „Sie" und „Ihr" benutzen wir einfach „you". Wenige wissen aber, dass bis zum 19. Jahrhundert eine zweite Form der Anrede im englischen Sprachraum existierte (die ursprünglich sogar weniger höflich als „you" war): „thou", sehr sichtbar zum Beispiel in den Romanen der Geschwister Brontë im viktorianischen England des 19. Jahrhunderts. Heute sprechen Briten nur noch Gott (wenn überhaupt) mit „thou" an. (Simon McDonald) (Translation)

Santiago Posteguillo continues his promotional Latin-American tour:

Un límite impreciso que da pie para preguntarle por su propio libro, que también combina hechos reales y ficción. "Este es un libro que tiene muchísimo más de verdad que de ficción", asegura.
"Lo que pasa es que hay datos históricos que nos llegan por fragmentos. Sabemos que Charlotte Brontë escribía cartas a un hombre casado y esperaba respuesta, y sabemos también que este hombre no le respondía. A partir de allí puedo describir a Charlotte Brontë yendo a la oficina de correos", explica. (Agustín De Beitia) (Translation)

The OUP Blog publishes an extract from Helen Small's introduction to Wuthering Heights, talking about narrative and nature; the Diss Express presents the upcoming performances of Jane Eyre by the Blue Orange Theatre Company; The News-Express reviews Texts from Jane Eyre; catch the Brontës reference in the Style Spring Fashion Special Magazine; glynfedwards posts a poem inspired by Wuthering Heights.