Wild flights of fictional magic

The Washington Times reviews Writers' House: Where Great Books Began by Nick Channer

In the early 1970s, one of my English Literature professors liked to use “Describe the houses in the novels we have read this semester and their significance” as an exam question. There was plenty to write about the eponymous “Wuthering Heights” and “Bleak House,” “Pride and Prejudice’s” Netherfield Park and Pemberley, plus so many other dwellings that loomed large symbolically in the various texts. (...)
The handsome Italianate dwelling of Elizabeth Gaskell in a suburb on the outskirts of Manchester perfectly suits her oeuvre which encompassed rural and urban alike, while the windswept parsonage of her great friend Charlotte Brontë and her sisters seems nothing less than essential to their wild flights of fictional magic. (Martin Rubin)

Today, July 27, in BBC Two:

The Pennine Way (BBC2, 7pm)
Adventurer Paul Rose pulls on his hiking boots to explore the 268-mile Pennine Way, to mark the 50th anniversary of Britain's first national trail being officially opened. His first leg takes him from Edale to Calderdale, and along the way he tells the story of Tom Stephenson, who fought landowners and governments to win public access to the full route. He also meets author and Northern Broadsides director Barrie Rutter, who recalls some of the literary greats who have lived nearby, including Ted Hughes and the Brontës. (Viv Hardwick in The Northern Echo)

The Independent (Ireland) summarizes the previous week:

Another black and white picture emerged last week of three Victorian women looking as miserable as sin which collector Seamus Molloy claims are the Brontës, based partly on the fact that there's three of them and they look miserable as sin. Experts and historians dispute this claim. The Queen is not a Nazi, those lassies are probably not the Brontës and the camera rarely stops lying. (Julia Molony)

Nilly Hall posts about a recent visit to Norton Conyers.