Baking for Jane Eyre

The Yorkshire Evening Post features Caryl Phillips and his novel The Lost Child.

The Lost Child begins with a traumatised Heathcliff, the offspring of a wealthy merchant and a former slave woman, struggling to support his ailing mother on the Liverpool docks. It examines Emily Brontë’s own dysfunctional relationship with her father, Patrick, but the juxtaposition of the story of Monica Johnson’s failed marriage to a Caribbean graduate student is a reminder that Yorkshire novelists also changed the literary landscape in the 20th century.
“At the age of 18, I realised that there were different types of England,” says Phillips, who was brought up on the Whinmoor estate in Leeds. “I started to think about how growing up in Yorkshire formed me.
“Emily and Charlotte Brontë always struck a chord because they wrote in dialect. I read the books as a teenager but I didn’t really take them in until I went to university. People like John Braine, Stan Barstow, Keith Waterhouse and David Storey were really important to me as a student because they were the types of writers teachers would not give you to read – unlike posh, southern contemporary authors like Iris Murdoch or Kingsley Amis. It was my way of reminding myself who I was.”

Repubblica (Italy) talks to author Erica Jong.

Ha liberato le donne, dice, ha aperto loro una strada. Paura di volare ha insegnato alle scrittrici a essere più sincere. Nel suo libro scrive che l'inferno degli scrittori è l'auto-censura e il Paradiso la libertà di dire la verità: "È così  -  precisa lei  -  non c'è niente di peggio che nascondersi o mentire, per uno scrittore. Che meraviglia quelle donne che hanno avuto coraggio, che libri belli e interessanti hanno scritto Colette, Charlotte Brontë, Simone de Beauvoir. E le vostre Natalia Ginzburg e Elsa Morante. Non è curioso che siano entrambe ebree?" (Elena Stancanelli) (Translation)

According to this columnist from The Millions,

There’s nothing like walking 270 miles and three weeks through squelching countryside, spending blister-plagued hours with your walking companion discussing the boggy landscapes of literature, to come to an understanding of Middle Earth and Prydain, of the Brontës, James Herriot, or any of the other books that had once teleported me to England from 1970s Michigan. (H.S. Cross)

Chicago Tribunes features Winifred Haun & Dancers' show Promise and announces that,

"Promise" will be preceded by "Come Months, Come Away," by Kanopy Dance Co. of Madison, Wis. The piece, created by Artistic Director Lisa Thurrell, is inspired by poets Brontë, Keats and Shelley. (Myrna Petlicki)

This is how Herald (Ireland) describes archaeologist Neil Oliver:

Neil, with his dark, flowing locks and casual scarf thrown around his neck, looks a lot like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights might look if someone had taken him shopping in Topman or River Island. (Pat Stacey)

The Awl discusses murder ballads in general and Reba McEntire’s The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia in particular.

It’s one of the sappiest, soggiest things you’ll ever see: an elderly murderess confessing it all to a feckless journalist. The turtle-necked gumshoe is somewhere between Emily Brontë’s Mr. Lockwood and Anne Rice’s Daniel Molloy. (Casey N. Cep)

If you are near Nottingham you might be interested in helping towards this Brontë-related cause, as reported by Nottingham Post:

Students are hoping to bake their way to the theatre as part of a fundraising drive.
Year 10s from Carlton le Willows Academy have developed a taste for British literature – thanks to a themed cake sale at the school.
All this week they will be baking and selling cakes so all 60 GCSE students can go to see Jane Eyre at Nottingham's Theatre Royal in February.
So far literary classics have been given a culinary spin, with Artful Jammy Dodgers, Wuthering Slices and Lord of the Ring-Donuts just some of the themed cakes on sale during form, break and lunch times this week.
Student Becky Harris said seeing the performance of the classic will make all the difference.
The 14-year-old made a cake called Great Eggspectations.
She said: "We are really just trying to raise as much as possible because it would be really useful to go and see the story performed.
"It will obviously be more dramatic and we will see it in a different way.
"We have finished reading the book so it would be good to move it on."
The 14-year-old said: "I came up with idea but most people had other puns they thought up.
"At first I wasn't too keen on Jayne [sic] Eyre but now I understand it more. We have all seen the film which has another take on it so it will be interesting to see it on stage," added Isabelle.
Head of media Amy Armstrong-Holmes, who organised the event along with fellow English teacher Tony Tenniswood, said: "The students have really taken to raising as much as possible.
"Both of our Year 10 classes are studying Jane Eyre as part of the new GCSE curriculum's requirement for a 19th-century novel to be read and they're really enjoying it!
''It will be great for them to see it on stage." (Dan Russell)

The Telegraph recommends Manchester - with its Elizabeth Gaskell house once visited by Charlotte Brontë - as a family city break.