'Singularly agreeable'

A local outdoor performance of the Chapterhouse Theatre Jane Eyre production is reviewed by Longridge & Ribble Valley News & Advertiser.

The accomplished ensemble work of all six members of the Chapterhouse Theatre cast made this an open air performance to savour in the first of this summer’s four plays at Lytham Hall.
Laura Turner’s skilled adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s vivid novel commanded attention and the 500-strong audience were utterly silenced by its moments of poignancy and violence.
Audibility on a breezy evening was an issue for a few in the first half, but not in the second.
Eliza Jade caught the independent-mindedness of a very Yorkshire Jane Eyre perfectly and, as Mrs Fairfax, Joanne Henry captured both loneliness and the consequent warmth on Jane’s arrival.
Louise Mellor was scattily charming as Adele, chilling as the deranged Bertha.
In an essentially women’s play, the three men played their roles effectively. [...]
A gruelling summer tour is in prospect, but it was Lytham’s privilege to enjoy the freshness of this new production, enhanced by evocative music and song and given admirable pace by Rebecca Gadsby’s clear direction. (Quentin Hughes)

LA Performing Arts Examiner reviews the play The Poe Show on stage at the Hollywood Fringe festival.

Originally produced by the Sacred Fools Theater company, Edgar Allen Poe is making an appearance at the Theater Asylum this year as part of the Hollywood Fringe in the risqué guise of a late night talk show host, "The Poe Show." This performance follows the format of the typical talk show including opening monologue, television breaks, and literary celebrity guests such as Dracula, Mary Shelly, Emily Brontë, and Tom Sawyer. (Laura Tull)

The Telegraph begins an article on football transfers telling sports readers about a thing called fan fiction.

In the fanfic universe, you can read or write pretty much anything you want.
Fan fiction – a genre in which amateur writers take existing characters and work them into their own homespun tales – is nothing new. Long before they wrote Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, the Brontë sisters would make up long fantasy adventures featuring the Duke of Wellington. (Jonathan Liew)

Lexology reflects about a lovely quote by Alan Bennett:

'The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.'Alan Bennett, The History Boys
My first moment like this took place when Miss Trunchbull said to Roald Dahl's Matilda 'I'm right and you're wrong. I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.' Aged six, a little precocious, and the youngest sibling in my family, I bubbled with frustration right alongside my fictional heroine. There have been many of these moments since, including a particularly melodramatic one during my hopelessly in love teenage years reading Wuthering Heights. Cathy says of Heathcliff, 'He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.' Cue the Donny Osmond music, please. (Rebecca Rose)

While the Sun Sentinel writes in defence of teachers and quotes Jane Eyre's words on Miss Temple:

Remember Miss Temple from "Jane Eyre"? "Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain." (Christopher de Vinck)

New Statesman reviews William Atkins’s The Moor:

In truth, the author is most comfortable tackling the historical and inherited psychological roles of such landscapes as described in the literary works of W H Auden, the Brontës, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath or Henry Williamson. There are, for instance, far more titles in the bibliography concerning the sexual politics of Hughes and Plath than there are about the environmental politics of red grouse and hen harriers. (Mark Cocker)

La Croix (France) suggests a trip to Yorkshire, 'land of the Brontë sisters'. Patheos's Take & Read has a Q&A with Jane Eyre’s Sisters author Jody Bower. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page shares pictures of an Emily Brontë-inspired photoshoot as part of British Flowers Week. Absolutely Gothic now posts about Heathcliff's return scene.