London Events: Live Reading of Jane Eyre and More

Several places in London hold today, April 21, a Jane Eyre Live Reading:

Live Reading of Jane Eyre

To celebrate 200 years since the birth of Charlotte Brontë, a live reading of Jane Eyre is organised by Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Complementing the Soane Museum’s exhibition exploring Charlotte Brontë’s  five visits to London as a published author and the National Portrait Gallery’s, Celebrating Charlotte Brontë: 1816-1855, on 21 April 2016, 200 years to the day since Brontë’s birth, the Soane Museum will lead a unique public participation live reading event across the capital.

Inspired by the famous plinths in Trafalgar Square, a ‘mobile’ Fifth Plinth will host readings of Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre at four locations: the Sir John Soane's Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the London Review Bookshop and the British Library. And we're inviting Brontë fans to take part!

If you would like to participate and read an extract for around 3-5 minutes (picking up from where the previous reader finished) then you can either register your interest in advance by emailing your name and preferred venue to press@soane.org.uk. Or you can just turn up on the day and put your name down to read - we will try and get through as many as we can. Everyone who does read will get a unique blue plaque-inspired badge. If you don't want to read, then just arrive at your choice of venue and enjoy listening to one of the greatest novels in English literature.

Timings for the day are:

11:00 Sir John Soane's Museum13:30 London Review Bookshop16:00 National Portrait Gallery (Ondaatje Wing Theatre)
18:30 British Library (this is a ticketed event. The live reading takes place as part of the Happy Birthday Charlotte event.)

British Library: Happy Birthday Charlotte
Where: Conference Centre
The British Library
Thu 21 Apr 2016, 18:30 - 21:30

A sophisticated evening of conversation, readings and gin to mark the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth has been created by artist, author and Brontë curator, Charlotte Cory.

Joining her will be Dame Jacqueline Wilson, one of the nation’s favourite writers and recently appointed Ambassador for Charlotte, and Ann Dinsdale, curator and Collections Manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

The National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Society of Literature also organize a parallel event:

Celebrating Charlotte Brontë
With Moira Buffini, Claire Harman, Rachel Joyce
Introduced by Tim Robertson
National Portrait Gallery
April 21st, 2016 7:00 PM

When a writer produces a novel as impressive as Jane Eyre, their fame is assured – like it or not. Even publishing under a pseudonym didn’t save Charlotte Brontë from the difficulties of celebrity and from being identified with her heroine. Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte was published last autumn to rave reviews – it is, as one critic put it, “elegant, sensitive, beautifully paced and moving”. The playwright Moira Buffini wrote the screenplay for the 2011 film of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowksa and Michael Fassbender. Rachel Joyce, author of the bestselling novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, has been fascinated by the Brontës since childhood. On 22 February, the National Portrait Gallery opened “Celebrating Charlotte Brontë: 1816-1855”, and on the bicentenary of Charlotte’s birth, Harman, Buffini and Joyce ask who was the real Charlotte Brontë? How did she negotiate the exposure that came with publication– especially after the deaths of Emily and Anne? And can a writer ever be free of her creations?