A good Brontë for the evening

Patheos quotes Charlotte Brontë in an article about the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr:

Eid is as much an occasion to give back and share the happiness with others, as it is to rejoice and celebrate individually. Charlotte Brontë put it very nicely that “happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.” (Qasim Rashid)

The quote comes from a letter from Charlotte Brontë to W.S. Williams, 19 March 1850.

ContraCosta Times reviews the San Francisco performances of Tim Michin's musical Matilda:

Matilda's parents, the Wormwoods, are none too sharp. Dad (Quinn Mattfeld) is an oaf, a smarmy used car salesman who loathes books. Mom (Cassie Silva) is a ditz, addicted to cheesy dance competitions. They both loathe it that 5-year-old Matilda doesn't share their slavish devotion to the "telly." She prefers to bury her nose into a good Dickens or Brontë for the evening. (Karen D'Souza)

NY Home Schooling Examiner interviews the artist Roger De Muth:

Q: Growing up, what artists and illustrators inspired you? (Meagan Meahan)
I discovered Thomas Bewick when I was a student. He worked in the early 1800’s as a wood engraver, and taught his students a very detailed technique of carefully cutting the end grain of a block of Boxwood. If you look carefully at my work and Thomas Bewick’s wood engravings, you’ll see a bit of his influence on me. When I was a kid, I remember a book cover by Fritz Eichenberg for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I became a huge fan of Fritz’s work. Robert Crumb, the underground cartoonist, and Pop artist Peter Max were strong influences too.

The Times Herald has a fascination for the obvious:

England is the home of so many amazing writers — from Keats, to Virginia Woolf, to the Brontë sisters, T.S. Eliot, Mary Shelley, George Orwell and the imaginative C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. (Jarreau Freeman)

 The Sydney Morning Herald talks about the BBC series Dan Snow's History of Railways:

Trainspotters will undoubtedly gain the most from this thorough investigation of that distinctly British passion, the locomotive. But even for the casually curious there are moments of interest (including the fact that the Brontë family blew their savings on railway speculation). It's also salutary to be reminded that one of the greatest and most enduring infrastructure projects in the world was reviled by the conservative press at the time. The more things change ... (Melinda Houston)

Blew their savings is a bit exaggerated, though.

Teachers discuss what the curriculum should be in The Guardian:

What would we choose to take off? To be honest, not much. Iconic texts that faced a barrage of abuse for being over-taught, irrelevant and hackneyed, well, they’ve been on one syllabus or another for a long time for good reasons. Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies are favourites because they’re well-edited, tightly written little pieces of perfection. And while I wouldn’t ditch Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontës or George Eliot either, I’d be careful where I put them, as they’re hard to teach within a curriculum which is increasingly congested. (Sarah Marsh)

Cebu Daily News (Philippines) interviews the writer Jessica Zafra:

How about early American literature?
Well, early American literature is quite young, and here you have Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Charles Dickens.

Hufvudstadsbladet (Finland) mentions the Brontës:

Tiderna förändras, men motivet förblir det samma. Under århundradenas lopp har ett babelskt bibliotek av oöverskådliga proportioner vuxit fram. Här finns allt mellan de olympiska gudarnas gyckel i Ovidius Narkissos och Echo samt familjefejderna i Romeo och Julia, eller den brutala viktorianska moralen i Jane Austens och Brontësystrarnas romantiska 1800-talsromaner, samt så gott som samtliga sångtexter av Morrisey. (...)
Men som sagt är bekännelsens liturgiska färg lika provisorisk som graffiti: Julias val att gå från Charles kunde lika väl handla om social respektabilitet – noblisse oblige och allt det där. Eller varför inte om status och mammon, som i fallet med Catherine i Emily Brontës Svindlande höjder, eller den tråkiga sidan av familjen Forsyte. (Oscar Rossi) (Translation)

La Repubblica di Bologna (Italy) describes Orson Welles's 1948 Macbeth adaptation in a curious way:

È vero che il cinema migliora quasi tutto, ma non riesce a rendere i versi più belli. Però “Macbeth” con le sue oscure brughiere sarebbe una gran cosa: una giusta via di mezzo tra Cime tempestose e La moglie di Frankenstein. (Translation)