Psychos like Heathcliff

The Telegraph & Argus highlights one of today's events at the AGM and Summer Festival of the Brontë Society: The Great Charlotte Brontë Debate.

Stage, screen and radio star Maxine Peake will visit Haworth on Saturday to perform readings of Charlotte Brontë’s novels Jane Eyre and Villette.
The actress will read at The Great Charlotte Brontë Debate, a highlight of this year’s Brontë Society summer festival weekend.
A panel of writers, including biographer Claire Harman and novelist Joanne Harris, will form two teams each championing one of Charlotte’s best-known novels.
The discussion will be chaired by Brontë Parsonage Museum Creative Partner 2016, novelist Tracy Chevalier and accompanied by selected readings from both books, which will be read by Maxine.
Arts officer Jenna Holmes said: “2016 is a very exciting year for the museum, and this event is one of the highlights of Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary programme.
“We have a passionate panel of writers to champion ‘Team Jane’ or ‘Team Lucy’ led by our Creative Partner Tracy Chevalier, and a performance by Maxine Peake will make it a very special evening indeed. We’re absolutely delighted that she is able to join us.” (David Knights)

West End Wilma announces a new UK tour of National Theatre's Jane Eyre production in 2017:

The National Theatre has announced details of its upcoming tour of Sally Cookson’s energetic and imaginative new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre.
The highly acclaimed co-production between the National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic opens at The Lowry in Salford on 8 April and will continue its journey around the country to Aylesbury, Plymouth, Southampton, Edinburgh, Woking, Glasgow, Canterbury, Cardiff, Milton Keynes, Leeds, Aberdeen and Birmingham. Further cities and venues to be announced.
This is a very significant time to be announcing the tour, as 2016 marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth and 2017 is the 170th anniversary of when Jane Eyre was first published.

The Wall Street Journal reviews the latest Jane Austen adaptation, Love & Friendship by Whit Stillman:

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that there are two types of people when it comes to love. The first belong to the school of Brontë, named for the 19th-century English sisters whose dark, romantic novels (Exhibit A: “Wuthering Heights”) send the message to women to seek their soul mates in psychos like Heathcliff.
At the opposite end stands Jane Austen. (...)
Mr. Stillman is speaking during a visit to New York City over a plate of ham and eggs at the Plaza Hotel. While sipping his coffee, he likens the Brontë-Austen clash to “an early 19th century gang war between the Jets and the Sharks.” Charlotte Brontë, he notes, “was one of Jane Austen’s fiercest critics.”
In sharp contrast to the works of the Brontë sisters, Austen’s fiction champions the head over the heart. It follows that her heroines are perceptive, intelligent and, as we would say today, low-maintenance. (William McGurn)

The Irish Times reviews the novel Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg:

Of all the themes that we recognise as belonging to the Gothic tradition, secrecy is perhaps the most enduring and indispensable. Ever since Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, the ur-text of the genre, crumbling manors have harboured their locked rooms. Whether they held a captive (as in Jane Eyre), an appalling secret (as in The Bloody Chamber) or nothing at all (as in Northanger Abbey), what was inside them was of secondary importance. What mattered, as any resolute heroine would tell you, was getting hold of the keys. (Paraic O'Donnell)

BBC asks several writers at the Hay Festival about their favourite books:

Maxine Peake
My favourite book of all time is Wuthering Heights. Not particularly original but it was the first book I read that really turned me on to literature, and I just loved the romance and the mysticism and the spookiness of it. And I just think how evocative it was of the Yorkshire landscape.

The Hollywood Reporter reviews the film So B. It:

Bernadette, whose agoraphobia keeps her inside their apartment, has awakened Heidi’s interest in literature, and some of their favorites are 19th century novels like Jane Eyre. But the novel that So B. It most closely resembles is Oliver Twist, the tale of a lost orphan boy gradually uncovering the truth of his privileged family background. (Stephen Farber)

Bustle on songs every bookworm should love:

 11. "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush
Ah, beautiful and strange, Kate Bush captures the spirit of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in this cool song. (Melissa Ragsdale)

Yahoo News! remembers a curious story told by Harriet Beecher Stowe:

Stowe was a fervent Christian with a strong interest in spiritualism, whereas [Georges] Eliot had turned her back on organised religion. When the American author claimed to have been visited by the ghost of Charlotte Brontë—a forebear whom both authors deeply admired—Eliot made her skepticism clear: ‘Whether rightly or not’, she told her friend, the episode struck her as ‘enormously improbable‘. (Emma Claire Sweeney)

Journal de Millau  (France) presents a local conference:

Ces questions vous intéressent ? Vous aimez votre région et êtes passionnés par l’Histoire et le mystère ? Alors, la Galerie A Capell’Art vous attend ce samedi 11 juin à 18h afin d’écouter les histoires passionnantes de Christian Doumergue, ce documentaliste, chercheur et conférencier avide d’aventure et de mystère.
Agé de 39 ans, Christian Doumergue sillonne depuis plusieurs années les routes de France à la poursuite des secrets de notre pays, n’hésitant pas à aller sur le terrain, dans des entreprises parfois dignes d’un véritable Indiana Jones, afin de retrouver ces «mystérieuses connexions» qui le hantent depuis longtemps. Après un double cursus universitaire en histoire des arts, puis en lettres, Christian Doumergue, très attiré par la littérature romantique française et anglaise, consacrera son mémoire de fin d’études aux remarquables sœurs Brontë, l’occasion de découvrir les grands auteurs du XIXe et de s’adonner au «virus» de la recherche documentaire. (Elida Fabre) (Translation)

Người Việt (Vietnam) reviews some local book releases and comments on how some books need some time to be appreciated:

Thế mà ngày nay, bức“Hoa Diên Vỹ” (Irises, 1889) được bán với giá mấy chục triệu đô! Cùng số phận hẩm hiu với Van Gogh là nữ văn hào Emily Brontë, tác giả cuốn”Đỉnh Gió Hú” (Wuthering Heights, 1847) khi xuất bản đã không được độc giả hưởng ứng ngay mà phải chờ đến cả trăm năm sau mới có lời khen. Ngày nay, tác phẩm duy nhất này của bà trở thành một tuyệt tác của thế giới, được mọi người, mọi nơi công nhận! (Ngọc Cường) (Translation)

Trendencias (Spain) on summer reads:

Herbarium. Las Flores de Gideon by Anna Casanovas
Anna Casanovas le da al género romántico una vuelta de tuerca con esta fascinante novela ambientada en Oxford, con una protagonista que había dejado su ciudad natal presa de un oscuro secreto y que regresa para ver a su abuela, enferma de Alzhéimer. Allí descubrirá que su padre ha estado investigando sobre unas ilustraciones conectadas con Jane Eyre; que su abuela, que podría saber algo al respecto, no puede ayudarla, y que la única persona que puede hacerlo, un profesor de la universidad de Oxford, no puede ni quiere estar a su lado. Amor y misterio se concentran en estas páginas que te van a atrapar quieras o no. (Puri Ruiz) (Translation)

Libération interviews the film director Arthur Harari:

Après avoir fréquenté le milieu fermé des diamantaires anversois pour nourrir son scénario, Harari reconnaît avoir «pioché un peu partout» : Shakespeare, la mythologie, les Hauts de Hurlevent, les mélos de Douglas Sirk. (Clémentine Gallot) (Translation)

Tribune de Genève (Switzerland) announces the next season of the Théâtre du Grütli which includes a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights:

Enfin, pour la fin d’avril, l’ambitieux élan de Camille Giacobino en direction des romantiques Hauts de Hurlevent qu’Emily Brontë pourrait bien s’avérer avoir écrits spécialement pour elle.? (Katia Berger) (Translation)

Telérama (France) reviews a recent concert of PJ Harvey:

A présent, pour elle, c’est le saxo ou rien. Telle est PJ Harvey, déterminée, pas du genre à céder à la facilité. On pourrait se sentir frustré, on est juste plus respectueux encore de son intégrité. Pour les deux titres revisités de To bring you my love (Down by the water, avec ses cordes de violon piquées suivant une version incandescente de la chanson titre), elle va chercher au plus profond d’elle-même son chant de blues woman des Hauts de Hurlevent. Elle gronde, hurle, gémit. En une heure trente, elle a tout donné, tout dit. (Hugo Cassavetti) (Translation)

9colonne (Italy) quotes the writer Michela Murgia vindicating the novels of Grazia Deledda:

Deledda invece ha scritto opere che Murgia considera sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda della narrativa europea: “Canne al vento e Cime tempestose sono due libri del tutto analoghi, per linguaggio, per trama, per temi, per visione”. (PO /Red) (Translation)

Falter (Austria) reviews a new German translation of Wuthering Heights:

Leidenschaft schafft Leiden
Emily Brontës „Sturmhöhe“ ist einer der irrsten Romane der Weltliteratur und soeben neu übersetzt worden
Eine 29-jährige Frau, die von der Welt außerhalb des heimatlichen Yorkshire nicht viel gesehen hat, die als extrem introvertiert und eigenbrötlerisch beschrieben wird und nach allem, was man weiß, nie verliebt gewesen ist, geschweige denn erotische Erfahrungen gesammelt hätte, veröffentlicht im Jahr 1847 unter Pseudonym einen Roman, der als eine der größten Liebesgeschichten aller Zeiten ins kollektive Gedächtnis eingehen wird. (Klaus Nüchtern) (Translation)

A Writer's Life has visited Haworth, Brontë country and Ponden Hall; Lit Crit and Wit posts about Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea; Linnet Moss continues analyzing Jane Eyre on page and screen. On this post, it is discussed Blanche Ingram and The Gypsy scene. Onirik briefly talks about Jane Eyre 1996. From My Mental Library reviews Robert Barnard's The Case of the Missing Brontë. the Sisters' Room talks about the April 28 event at which Charlotte Brontë's bicentenary was celebrated in Rome. Impressions Chosen from Another Time (in Italian) is rereading Jane Eyre.