Having an Affair with Jane

DJ Taylor discusses in The Guardian the current enemies of writers:

A certain kind of reader does very well in a landscape of cheap books of whose merits no serious questions are asked. So do the self-published and the self-publicising. And so, above all, does the online monopoly for whose ultimate benefit the racket is conducted. But what about the writers? How do they get on? Where do they find the leisure and the funding to produce the books on which any literary culture, whether staffed by Dickens, Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë, or by a gang of crowdfunders and cyber-collaborators, will eventually be judged? This may be a good age in which to be reading books, or selling books, or preventing other people from selling them, but is it a good age to be writing them?

Also in The Guardian a list of the events and anniversaries of the year:

The bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth in 1816, with luckless timing that means she is always liable to be overshadowed by the Bard.

Same as The Irish Post:

Birth of Charlotte Brontë — 1816
Charlotte Brontë was born 200 years ago on April 21, 1816. The daughter of Co. Down man Patrick Brontë (born on St Patrick’s Day, 1777) she completed Jane Eyre in 1847.
Charlotte married a Co. Antrim man, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the couple spent some time in Banagher, Co. Offaly. (Mal Rogers)

Natalie Ilsley lists several books to read in 2016 in Newsweek:

Jean Rhys, author of the fêted prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Wild Sargasso Sea, evokes a tale of self-determination in the face of depression and death. Deemed too dour for its initial 1939 readership, this book is for the bookworm who doesn’t seek a happy ending.

The Brontës in an article about the Premier League. We read it on The Bleacher Report:

On using the T-word, managers in England tend to turn the shade of crimson usually reserved for spinster sisters in Brontë novels on being asked to a dance by eligible landowners. To even countenance the idea that qualifying for the Champions League is not the be-all-and-end-all of a season’s work, flicks the bird at modern football parlance. (Alex Dunn)

The Yorkshire Post list several of the 'winners' of the year:

Sally Wainwright
The Bafta-winning screenwriter still has strong ties to her home county and has become one of television’s most in-demand writers. A lifelong fan of the Brontës, Wainwright was thrilled this year to work on a drama about the difficult life of the family.

The drama is of course the upcoming To Walk Invisible.

The Italian writer Elena Ferrante is certainly 'walking invisible'. The mysterious writer is profiled in Haaretz:

In an interview last spring in the Paris Review, Ferrante was asked if a woman has to work harder in order for her writing not to be dismissed as intended “for women.” She explained that, as a girl, it was her understanding that a good book must have a male hero. Then later, when she began writing her own stories about girls, “the idea remained — indeed, it grew stronger — that the greatest narrators were men and that one had to learn to narrate like them. I didn’t want to write like Madame de La Fayette or Jane Austen or the Brontës … but like Defoe or Fielding or Flaubert or Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or even Hugo ... That phase lasted a long time, until I was in my early 20s, and it left profound effects.” (Gili Izikovich)

Anita Roy in The Hindu Business is so right:

The latest editions of the Penguin Classics, for example, look like they’ve been individually hand-tooled by elves and bound in baby seal. They possibly have. Dickens, the Brontës, the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe — all reissued in 2015 — have never looked so distinguished in their brand new, hipsterishly antiquified, Arts-and-Crafts-inspired dust jackets. According to the publishers’ website, these books are for people who “not only love having a great Classic to read but also cherish the feel of a wonderful object.”

Diablo Magazine talks with one of their local celebrities, film director Cary Fukunaga:

The project [Jane Eyre 2011] also presented the young director with new challenges, such as putting his own artistic signature on a story that has been adapted many times for film and television, most famously in a 1943 version starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.
“That was the version I watched over and over as a kid,” Fukunaga says. “Despite the fact that there have been many versions, I felt that I still had my vision of the story to tell. I was able to experiment and work on perfecting the craft of filmmaking.”
Fukunaga’s interpretation was truer to the novel in depicting the age difference between the romantic leads. It also had a more ominous tone than previous iterations. With each film, Fukunaga says his goal is to improve his filmmaking. “I wish I had 10 years just to practice the craft of filmmaking before having to show something to the world,” he says. (Peter Crooks)

The New York Observer 'warns' you not to date a man who reads:

Don’t date a man who reads. He is fine spending time on his own. He can entertain himself for hours with or without you. A Brief History of Time might be your worst enemy. You might wonder if he is having an affair with Emma or Jane Eyre. You will always have to share his time with books. And, when you work late, he won’t get upset; books will keep him company. (Cammi Pham)

TodaLiteratura (Spain) interviews the editor of the Spanish translation of Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance (1790):

Javier Velasco Oliaga: ¿Qué características destacaría de “Un romance siciliano”?
Juan Manuel Corral: Coloca las primeras piedras de lo que luego será la gran obra de Radcliffe, “Los misterios de Udolfo”. Así, ya podemos encontrarnos todos esos pasajes que influirán en la obra de autores tan importantes como las Hermanas Brontë, con mujeres encarceladas en los subsuelos de un castillo, como Edgar Allan Poe, el cual homenajeó/criticó a la autora en “El retrato oval”, o como Jane Austen, que los imitará en por ejemplo “La abadía de Northanger". (Translation)

Premiere México reviews the film By the Sea:

Frente al mar no es el mejor trabajo de Angelina Jolie, pero sin duda no es el peor. Queda claro que Vanessa y Roland no serán catalogados junto algunos de los amantes tormentosos más famosos del cine –como Catherine y Heathcliff en Cumbres borrascosas o Blanche y Stanley de Un tranvía llamado deseo–. Sin embargo, esta cinta tiene momentos en que brilla, personajes redondos y bien construídos, y una historia que presenta un retrato sincero sobre el deterioro de las relaciones. (Amanda Adame) (Translation)

Lane Hill House reviews The Brontë Plot by Katherine Reay.