The quintessential weird kid

International Business Times interviews the writer Robin Stevens:

Which literary character do you most identify with?
"I love characters like Jane Eyre – I like that she was different and a bit awkward and a bit weird," Stevens says. "When I first read it, I completely was like: 'oh yeah, that's me, I understand that' – like the quintessential weird kid." (Lydia Smith)

The Telegraph and The Hindu interview Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men:

His personal literary heroes, and influences in the creation of Mad Men, include Charles Dickens, JD Salinger, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson and the American short story writer John Cheever. “During the show itself, I was reading all kinds of things: Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Helen Gurley Brown’s book [Sex and the Single Girl, published in 1962].” (Jane Mulkerrins)

“I’m a product of a very expensive education. My father is a professor and my mother was a teacher. Writers were heroes in our house. I definitely was influenced by the writers that I love and there are a lot of them. I love J.D. Salinger and I’ve spoken at great length about the relationship of John Cheever and the show. I love F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson….” (Mini Anthikad Chhibber) 

Elle talks with the production designer of the series, Janie Bryant:

Yes, I wanted to play a businesswoman on TV, not actually be one. Anyway, I found my way into graduating from the American College for the Applied Arts in fashion design. So my background is in fashion design. But when I was a kid I was obsessed, obsessed with old movies because my mother was really into old movies. It was a family requirement to watch Gone With the Wind and The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz when they came on TV. My mother would take me to the Tivoli Theater in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was a revival theatre. They would play Wuthering Heights and all the old movies you could possibly see and I was always in love with the costume design in those films. (Jessica Grose)

The Weekender posts a 'contemporary' review of Jane Eyre:

Much like my own father, Currer Bell, a novelist of Thornton, has been touched by similar proclivities. Bell’s recently published “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography,” portrays a young feminine narrator, Miss Jane Eyre, who is described as “poor, obscure, plain and little.” Naturally, a reader cannot help but feel an instant and deep affinity for her character. Both affected as we are bewitched by her presence, the reader, who Bell often speaks to, follows her from the beginning of her journey until the harrowing end. Be it what it would, there is love even among the most destitute of situations. (Read more) (K. E. Muir)

New York Magazine discusses Stina Marie Claire Tweeddale's inspirations:

"Nearly half the songs I’ve written are after I've sat with my friends and just had a little joke with them and gone and written a song from them," she says. The songs do have an intimate, conversational urgency, even at their most literary. "Choker," inspired by Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, is about an implied relationship with the Marquis de Sade. Stina also cites Wide Sargasso Sea, Leonard Cohen’s novels, and sensitive chats with friends. (Maggie Lange)

This columnist from The Michigan Daily explains her literary tastes:

I love Jane Austen. People who dismiss her work as vapid chick-lit completely miss her unique and biting critique of class and upper-class mores — which is unrivaled to this day. Yes, you can expect a happy ending, but so what? I’m not of the school of thought that everything worth reading has to end in doom and gloom. Perhaps most importantly, Austen led me to other great female authors like the Brontë Sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell and even Edith Wharton. And of course, her works provided hours of quality miniseries material, complete with attractive British men in cravats. Is there any greater legacy? (Grace Prosniewski)

Laura Cantrell's song Emanuel (a reply to The Charlatans's Emilie) is discussed in Q Magazine. The songwriter says:

“Then I heard the Charlatans instrumental track with its gorgeous string arrangement. The lushness of the strings is very poignant and dreamy. I thought Emilie should seem a bit ethereal, but the more I meditated on her, the more interesting it seemed to me that she have some resilience, some inner toughness of her own, even with an overlay of romance and melodrama. The idea came about that perhaps she’d been denied the ability to speak for herself and that perhaps the romance/relationship she was experiencing had emboldened her, helped bring out her own voice. Certain images, like characters from Jane Eyre whose mysteries are revealed dramatically, or old films like Light In The Piazza with its young American woman thought to be simple minded as she marries into an Italian family, were steeping themselves into the mix.”

Alyssa Rosenberg shares in The Washington Post her favourite books written by women:

“Love Trouble Is My Business,” by Veronica Geng and “Texts from Jane Eyre,” by Mallory Ortberg: I wanted to end this list with two female humor writers I adore. Geng was a brilliant New Yorker staffer who wrote bizarre genre mash-ups and seemed to be constructing all of her pieces as elaborate games that reaped huge rewards if you were smart enough to understand them. And Ortberg feels like one of Geng’s descendents, someone who rereads and remashes existing material to hilarious results.

The Sacramento Bee begins an article about a local trail like this:

Blithedale Ridge sounds like something out of the Brontë sisters, all wind-swept heaths and brooding hedgerows fraught with romance and intrigue. It’s not, of course. But work with me, people, I’m trying to make this trail sound appealing to those Sacramento flatlanders who really can’t be bothered to drive all the way deep into Marin County just for a hilly jaunt. (Sam McManis)

Ballard News-Tribune looks at dating through time:

In upper class families, young people were supposed to link up with families with as high a status as could be arranged. Families cemented their power alliances by supervising their offspring’s marital plans. It is no wonder that couples in arranged marriages often found other ways to find sexual partners more to their liking. Upper classes who removed to the countryside in the summer months played bedroom tag. In a world of secret alliances, such goings-on were kept out of public scrutiny. The novel Wuthering Heights centered on this story theme. The author was true to the morality of her time and so the reader had to wait until near the end of the book to get closure. The star crossed lovers waited throughout many years for an opportunity to be reunited. (Georgie Bright Krunkel)

ScreenDaily reviews Thomas Vinterberg's  Far From the Madding Crowd:

Vinterberg, Oscar-nominated for The Hunt, has previously made two small, indifferently-received English language films in Dear Wendy and It’s All About Love, and Far From The Madding Crowd is a step up in scale, although its commercial appeal will have more in common with Cary Fukunaga’s reserved Jane Eyre than with Ang Lee coming to the UK to make a boisterous Sense & Sensibility. (Fionnula Flanigan)

Dan Viêt (Vietnam) takes lessons for life from books:

Từ cuốn tiểu thuyết “Pride and Prejudice” (Kiêu hãnh và định kiến) nổi tiếng của nhà văn Anh Jane Austen và tác phẩm “Jane Eyre” của nhà văn nữ Charlotte Brontë, bài học đáng giá được nêu ra là: Đừng sợ hãi vì bạn không tìm ra được ngay câu trả lời. Kinh nghiệm sẽ là bài học quý giá dành cho bạn và bạn có thể tự mình tìm được hạnh phúc. Đừng dựa dẫm vào bất kỳ điều gì để tìm kiếm hạnh phúc hay một cuộc sống tốt đẹp, hãy lắng nghe lời trái tim mách bảo và tìm kiếm hạnh phúc. (...)
Hãy lắng nghe lương tâm của chính mình và hành động đúng đắn, cho dù bạn có phải trả bất cứ giá nào. Hãy lắng nghe lời trái tim mách bảo bạn. Mọi việc không phải luôn diễn ra đúng như ý muốn của chúng ta, nhưng hãy sống đúng với nguyên tắc đạo đực, mọi việc sẽ suôn sẻ - bài học trong tác phẩm "Jane Eyre" của Charlotte Brontë. (Minh Khánh) (Translation)

Celestial; has a nice tumblr collage with Brontë inspiration.