The best of the Brontë bunch

It looks as if every local event in the Haworth area is having some sort of bicentenary celebration, which is fine by us of course. The Telegraph and Argus reports that,

The University of Bradford will celebrate its diverse student body with a week long festival later this month. [...]
And the university will be marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of pioneering female author Charlotte Brontë by re-releasing her classic Jane Ayre [sic] as an e-book. (Chris Young)

And Keighley News tells about another event:

Organisers of the fifth annual Haworth Beer Festival are looking forward to welcoming a large gathering of real ale enthusiasts to the village's Old School Room later this month.
This year's event takes place from April 15 to 17, and will include dozens of real ales, ciders and perrys. [...]
This year's festival will include a vintage cocktail parlour dedicated to Charlotte Brontë in her bicentennial year, and fusion food provided by Amontola Restaurant in Cross Roads. (Miran Rahman)

We are trying really hard here not to make a joke about the festival and Branwell's bicentenary next year. It's not easy!

An article on Charles Dickens by his great-great-great-granddaughter Lucinda Dickens Hawksley in The Guardian remembers the fact that,

Many Victorian girls and even adult women were forbidden by their families to read novels if the heroines were considered too controversial (including Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre).

Writer Eva Holland shares ten facts about herself on Female First, one of which is that,

I'm a huge admirer of all the Brontë sisters and especially Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often overlooked but I think it's the best of the bunch. If it were published today I think it would be compared to Gone Girl and whizz straight to the top of the book charts.

The Guardian has also selected the 'Top 10 depictions of British rain' in British literature.

8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The night Heathcliff disappears from the Heights, having overheard Cathy say that to marry him would “degrade” her, a violent thunderstorm adds to the novel’s already high foul-weather count. Cathy stays up all night, “bonnetless and shawlless”, calling for him in the rain. The next day she comes down with a fever that nearly kills her. The association between Heathcliff and bad weather persists – when his body is discovered, the window open, “his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still”. (Melissa Harrison)

Sharing a website that shows you what other (famous) people had accomplished by the time they were a given age, The Debrief mentions the fact that,

At 29, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first sentence by telephone while Agatha Christie published her first book and Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights. (Jess Commons)

IOL (South Africa) features artist Eris Silke, whose

background [is] filled with significant engagement with major Western literature: Dostoyevsky, Hans Christian Anderson, Tolstoy, Poe, Mann, Emily Brontë and so on. (Danny Shorkend)

The Daily Mail shares pictures of Norton Conyers and its attic now that it's being reopened. Ring Ring (Vietnam) features Jane Eyre. On the Brussels Brontë Blog, Charlotte Mathieson writes about visiting Brussels in search for the Brontës and Alexandra Reis reviews Juliet Barker's The Brontës. On Facebook, Haworth Village shares several pictures of the construction of the set for Sally Wainwright's To Walk Invisible.

Finally, a notice from the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page concerning today's event.

We are really sorry to advise that Salley Vickers will be unable to speak at our "Reader, I Married Him" event tomorrow due to ill health, and we wish her a speedy recovery. We are happy to welcome the very lovely Audrey Niffenegger, fellow contributor to the book, in her place.

Bookshelves & Daydreams posts about Wuthering Heights. Respectable Body Count reviews briefly Jane Steele.