Weddings, Artists of Choice, Ghosts and Chefs

The Telegraph, BBC News, The Times, Metro... carry a nice love story involving, among other things, a Jane Eyre quote on a Tweet:

A book lover who declared her love for the man running the official Waterstones Oxford Street Twitter account has revealed how she eventually ended up marrying him.
Victoria O’Brien had tweeted Waterstones Oxford Street in 2012, posting: "Well I'm in love with whoever is manning the @WstonesOxfordSt account. Be still my actual beating heart." (...)
On July 17 she tweeted a photo of herself and new husband Jonathan O’Brien on their wedding day, alongside her original tweet.
She included a famous quote from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë in the tweet, which has been shared and liked by more than 30,000 Twitter users. (Mark Molloy & Hannah Furness)

Congratulations to the people behind the musical Wasted which has won UK Best Musical Theatre Artists of Choice Awards given by the Kevin Spacey Foundation (via Whats On Stage). A  ‘demo-tape’ workshop will be performed this October at the West Yorkshire Playhouse Brontë Season.

The winner of the UK Musical Theatre category was Wasted by Adam Lenson, Christopher Ash and Carl Miller. The rock musical drama tells the story of the Brontë siblings, with songs inspired by the sisters. (Will Longman)

Spooky entertainment at the Black Bull in Haworth according to Keighley News:

A company providing special access to a Haworth venue for ghost-hunting events has more eerily entertaining fun in store this summer.
Lost Ghost Nights has already run an event at the Black Bull, in Main Street, last month. (June)
The proceedings were launched by TV and radio historian Simon Entwistle, who staged a ghost walk around Haworth.
Participants were then treated to a "lock in" at the Black Bull where they investigated the property for ghosts then rounded the night off with a graveyard vigil.
The Black Bull will again be the venue for a similar night on Monday July 25.
This begins with dinner from 8.30pm to 9.30pm then a ghost investigation from 9.30pm to 2am.
As well as being known for reported sightings of ghosts and poltergeist activity, the Black Bull was infamous for being the regular ‘haunt’ of troubled drug addict Branwell Brontë, brother of the famous literary sisters. (Miran Rahman)

Next Thursday on BBC1, Celebrity Masterchef in Haworth:

Cooking up history were Celebrity Masterchef contestants as they catered for a Brontë feast in Haworth.
The semi-final of the popular show, filmed in the village last Easter, will be screened on Thursday at 8pm on BBC One.
The remaining contestants will be seen cooking meals in marquees in the meadow behind the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
They will then serve around 70 specially-invited guests in the Old School Rooms, on  (David Knights on The Telegraph & Argus)

New Statesman reviews The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry:

As the tension increases with portents such as “a plague of cuckoo-spit in the gardens” and “a cat aborting its kittens on the hearth”, The Essex Serpent recalls variously the earthiness of Emily Brontë, the arch, high-tensile tone of Conan Doyle, the evocation of time and place achieved by Hilary Mantel and Sarah Waters and the antiquarian edgelands horror of M R James. (Ben Myers)

Mallory Ortberg remembers in The Guardian how she was able to publish Texts from Jane Eyre:

Texts from Jane Eyre was the first book I ever wrote, or even tried to write, and when I found my agent, I rather assumed my part in the process was done. She had approached me about the project, so I assumed an editor would approach her in turn, and I would continue to attract publishing attention like a sea anemone attracts shrimp. This turned out not to be the case: it took over a year, and quite active shopping, to sell the book proposal, rather than seeing it snapped up straight away.

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner recommends a visit to Oakwell Country Park

Oakwell Country Park, Birstall
Older children might enjoy seeing the exterior of Oakwell Hall, featured by Charlotte Brontë as Fieldhead in her novel Shirley, while most will love to explore the country park with its rolling acres and many places to picnic. There’s a small admission charge for the house but if the weather’s fine then the great outdoors, with play park and nature trail, is just as fine a place to be. A cafe on site offers drinks and snacks and there’s ample free parking. (Samantha Gildea)

Big Issue North vindicates the figure of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth:

Realising the potential of stories to get her politics out to a wider audience, Carnie Holdsworth was a committed literary experimenter, dabbling with a variety of popular genres – detective fiction, romance, the gothic. She sold well. Her 1917 book, Helen of Four Gates – an even darker take on Wuthering Heights – was a bestseller here and in the US, and was also made into a film. (Nicola Wilson)

Bookriot on unintentionally creepy love interests.

If you’ve ever actually been hit on by your boss, you know what I mean by this being a creepy situation. I have never felt as physically creeped out as I have in this situation, and it shows up quite a lot in fiction–going back even to Jane Eyre. (Susie Rodarme)

On Vegolosi (Italy) we found the wtf moment of the month. Meet Charlotte Brontë the (irrefutable) vegan:

La testimonianza di Elizabeth Gaskell, amica e sua prima biografa, ricorda la mania del padre, trasmessa alle figlie, per la cucina vegetariana: anche se la biografia a loro dedicata è poi risultata fantasiosa in alcune parti secondo molti critici, questo aspetto della vita delle sorelle Bronte pare inconfutabile. E leggendo le pagine di Charlotte, determinata come la sua massima creatura, Jane Eyre, che celava sotto un perbenismo borghese una vita appassionata, non è difficile crederlo. (Yuri Benaglio) (Translation)

AlexcityOutlook tells about the local library's stairs literary makeover, including two steps devoted to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; Reviews by a Book Fanatic posts about Jane Eyre; the Portuguese and Spanish translations of  Villette and The Professors translationsare discussed on the Brussels Bronté Blog. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook Wall reports the visit of Josephine Reames, great grand-daughter of Sir James Roberts who gifted Haworth Parsonage to the Brontë Society in 1928.