Signed by 1,457 people #saveredhouse

Both The Guardian, the Yorkshire Post and BBC News report the news that the copy of Robert Southey’s edition of The Remains of Henry Kirke White belonging to Maria Branwell, annotated by her and other members of the family (and containing also a poem and a piece of prose by Charlotte Brontë) has finally arrived in the Parsonage. We don't know why this story resurfaces now because it is basically the same as we already reported in December 2015. Even with the same comments by Brontë experts like Juliet Barker and Ann Dinsdale.
EDIT: Also on Halifax Courier, The Telegraph &  Argus.

You know that we at BrontëBlog are running a campaign to save the Red House Museum. Fortunately, we are not alone and The Friends of Red House are running a local campaign and an e-petition on the Kirklees Council website. The Spenborough Guardian informs:

A petition to save Red House Museum in Gomersal has reached more than 1,000 signatures in a week.
Under Kirklees Council budget plans the historic home faces the axe.
Friends of Red House member Ruth Yates said a petition which was created online and handed out in shops last week has been signed by 1,457 people.
“In a week that’s really good going. We really wanted to say a big thank you to the people of Gomersal,” she said.
“We hope that it will help to keep Red House open.” (...)
The petition reads: “Red House is the only example open to the public of a yeoman clothier’s family house and workplace, complete with outbuildings and historic, award-winning gardens.
“It was owned and run by the Taylor family for 400 years, who made a substantial contribution to the area’s textile industry.
“The family even ran their own bank from Red House for a little while.
“Charlotte Brontë was a close friend of Mary Taylor, and featured the family as the Yorkes, and Red House as ‘Briarmains’ in her novel ‘Shirley. “Considering these close links it is very sad that Kirklees Council has made this announcement when we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth.”
People can sign the petition online until July 21 at www.kirklees.gov.uk/petitionsPublic consultation over the plans runs until Sunday. Visit www.kirkleestalk.org/index.php/get-involved/lets-talk-about-museums/ (Jo Henwood)

The Chester Chronicle interviews the Marketing Cheshire director of tourism, Alison Duckworth:

What is your favourite book? I love to read and enjoy a variety of books, but if I was to choose I would select two as they had a profound effect on me – Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.  (Jo Henwood)

A couple of Brontë heroes in the What's on TV list of TV historical hunks:

Tom Hardy – Wuthering HeightsFrom East End gangster  to one of romantic literature’s sexiest brutes, a clean-shaven, Tom Hardy sizzled as Heathcliff in ITV’s 2009 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel…
Toby Stephens – Jane EyreDame Maggie Smith’s son Toby Stephens played Mr Rochester, Jane Eyre’s mysterious, brooding object of lust in the BBC’s 2006 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel… He falls on desperate times but we, like Jane (Ruth Wilson), herself would overlook his bigamy for a bit of thingummy! (Mick Flood)

The Millions publishes part of the preface of the recent book Exquisite Masoquism by Claire Jarvis (which we already presented some weeks ago):

To understand the elements of the masochistic scene, consider one of the strangest moments in a very strange novel, when Wuthering Heights’s observant servant, Nelly Dean, comes upon Heathcliff, staring, it seems, at Catherine the Elder’s ghost:

Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall; for when I regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within two yards’ distance. And whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The fancied object was not fixed, either: his eyes pursued it with unwearied diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim.

Jettison for a moment the question at the heart of this brief passage (does Heathcliff see the dead woman’s ghost?) and focus instead on the physical scene it describes. Nelly perceives (or thinks she perceives) Heathcliff’s horror written on his face. But Nelly sees something other than horror there: rapture. Rapture and anguish, in equal portions, freeze Heathcliff in his attitude, staring at someone who may or may not be there, chilling his body so intensely that even a grasp for food fails. “Pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes” — here, the author describes a man moving — his hands “clench,” rigid, before they reach food — toward a starving death. Brontë’s inclusion of “exquisite” imagines there might be some kind of aesthetic satisfaction — or consummation — in Heathcliff’s experience. In all of its meanings, “exquisite” develops precision and cultivation so extremely that they can tip from pleasure into pain, from beauty into fastidiousness into horror. (Read more)

GQ runs quite a weird story:

A school in Sydney, Australia has banned clapping, citing "members of our school community who are sensitive to noise." (Read: teachers.) This is some Jane Eyre bullshit, I tell you what. (Lauren Larson)

Bookriot places Wuthering Heights at the top of a list of books for ... fans of  the Kanye/Taylor feud:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë:
Let’s be real: Wuthering Heights is, without a question, the ORIGINAL train wreck what-are-they-doing-I-can’t-look-away book.
Often misrepresented as a romance,Wuthering Heights follows the relationship of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, who drag everybody they know into a spiral of madness around their relationship. There’s multiple instances of bullying, humiliation, abuse, death, and ghost sightings, because if Emily Brontë was only going to write one novel before her death, then damn, it might as well have everything.
If you like the drama of the Taylor / Kanye feud and how it manages to drag everybody into it – and I mean everybody – then you’ll love Wuthering Heights. (Nicole Brinkley)

Freim (México) thinks that Wuthering Heights is a short (?) novel that you should read:

Este libro fue escrito en 1847 por Emily Brontë aka Ellis Bell y es todo un rush de emociones lo que podrás encontrar a través de sus páginas, desde amor, locura y vida, hasta sus extremos como la muerte, el odio y la venganza, en la que la dependencia entre dos personas puede llegar a convertirse en una tragedia. (Karen ZLW) (Translation)

La Opinión (in Spanish) interviews the author Steve Alten, clearly not a Brontëite:

MEG no fue escrito para adolescentes, es un libro para personas adultas, pero el público joven ADORA las historias de tiburones gigantes… A mí mismo me fascinaban cuando iba al instituto. Es puro entretenimiento, no como Romeo y Julieta o Cumbres Borrascosas (Zzzzzzzzzzzzz….) (Javier Peinado) (Translation)

Red Line (Greece) talks about laïcité and quotes Wuthering Heights:

Στην πραγματικότητα, μόνο η laïcité μας βοηθά να καταλάβουμε ότι οι ανθρώπινες κοινωνίες θα μπορούσαν ανά πάσα στιγμή να μετατραπούν σε πραγματική κόλαση αν δεν βελτιωθούν (όπως έμμεσα υπαινίσσεται η Emily Brontë στο μυθιστόρημα του Wuthering Heights), πράγμα που μας ωθεί στην πολιτική δράση με στόχο την αλλαγή της υπάρχουσας κοινωνικής θέσμισης, και όχι στην ανάθεση μιας υπόσχεσης για κάποια μεταθανάτια ζωή. (Μιχάλης Θεοδοσιάδης) (Translation)