Charlotte Probably Walked on Them

Healds House (the Dewsbury place where Miss Wooler moved Roe Head School in 1838 and where Charlotte Brontë eventually taught) is on the market, according to the Daily Mail:

When Michael Ingram set about renovating a 16th Century house he’d bought 20 year ago in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, he found he was quite literally walking in the footsteps of Charlotte Brontë.
Michael had taken over Healds House in the town and – though its Grade II listing meant he couldn’t undertake major structural work – one of the first things he did was rip up the old carpet in the imposing entrance hall with its sweeping staircase and galleried landing.
Underneath were perfectly preserved tiles dating back to when Healds House had a completely different life. From 1837 it was a school, where one of the teachers was none other than the elder Brontë sister, Charlotte. (...)
‘We’d intended to replace the old carpet but when we took it up we found these wonderful tiles,’ says the property’s current owner Michael, a licensee who runs a club in nearby Batley. ‘It’s amazing to think that Charlotte Brontë probably walked on them. It’s nice to have that sense of history with the house.’
Although more popularly associated with Haworth, in the Pennines north-west of Bradford, the Brontë sisters do have strong links with the area south of the city too, around Dewsbury. The girls attended a school called Roe Head in the small town of Mirfield, run by Miss Margaret Wooler, who relocated it to Healds House in 1837. Charlotte, 19 at the time, stayed on as a teacher and Anne – who was later to write The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall – as a pupil.
Though Charlotte and Miss Wooler had been friends, Anne’s failing health at the school was cause for some friction between them, and the Brontës’ father Patrick removed Anne from it. Charlotte also left, and went on to a short career as a governess while she worked on her writing.
Healds House returned to being a private residence after Miss Wooler retired, and it was the size of it as a potential family home that attracted the Ingrams to it in the 1990s. (...)
Healds House had local distinction even before the young Brontës set foot in it; in earlier times it was used by the followers of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, as a meeting place.
And it made a lasting impression on Charlotte. Before it was a school, the house had been the birthplace of a local clergyman, the Rev W. M. Heald, who it is said provided the inspiration for the Rev Cyril Hall in Charlotte’s novel Shirley. (David Barnett)

The Herald on Sunday highlights the best upcoming TV shows as presented at the Edinburgh International Television Festival:

To Walk Invisible
Appearing in conversation with Russell T Davies, Happy Valley writer Sally Wainwright unveiled her take on the Brontës, due to be screened on BBC One at Christmas. “The BBC asked for a biopic so I've looked at the last three years when they were all still alive,” said Wainwright. “They'd all been away doing different things but they were all back at home in 1845 … They were the archetypal dysfunctional family in many ways, the Brontës”. Meat and drink for Wainwright, in other words. Chloe Pirrie plays Emily Brontë as dark, troubled and combustible, while Finn Atkins and Charlie Murphy play Charlotte and Anne respectively. (Barry Didcock)

Festival Magazine reviews the Jane Eyre. An Autobiography production seen at the Edinburgh Fringe:

There's a lot to say about Dyad Productions' one-person version of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. There's the script, for starters, which manages to package the whole of Charlotte Brontë's first-person narrative into the space of an hour-and-a-half. It's an extremely sensitive job by Elton Townend Jones, who manages to cram all 38 chapters in without it ever feeling rushed, squashed or misshapen. (Evan Beswick)

The Guardian interviews the writer Tama Janowitz:

You describe how you submitted your early work to magazines under the name Tom A Janowitz… (Alex Clark)
I didn’t get anybody to read those pieces and then I think my mom and I said, look, it’s written from the first person point of a man, let’s just see what the reality is. And you know, Tom was getting letters from editors at Esquire… things had not changed really since the Brontës writing under the name of the Bells, or George Eliot. It was an interesting experiment.

Milenio (México) interviews another writer, Jennifer Clement:

Jennifer Clement defiende la literatura como un espacio de denuncia. La escritora nacida en Greenwich, Connecticut, Estados Unidos, pone dos ejemplos difíciles de rebatir: la repercusión que tuvo Oliver Twist, de Charles Dickens, para cambiar las condiciones de miles de niños víctimas explotación laboral y el empoderamiento de las mujeres tras las novelas de Jane Austen y Charlotte Brontë. Por eso, en su novela Ladydi (Lumen, 2014) retrató el calvario de las mujeres de la sierra de Guerrero, acosadas por tratantes de personas para ser vendidas como esclavas sexuales. (Vianey Fernández) (Translation)

Author and writer in Progress has another writer interview, with A. Gavazzoni:

What authors or books have influenced you?  So many marvelous writers inspired me to start writing, with the classical ones like Emily Bronte, Stendhal, Dumas, Saad Marquis, Margaret Mitchell.

Finally an alert from Wycoller, Lancashire:

Tales around the table at Wycoller
Sun 28 August 1pm & 2pm

Tales around the table Join Christine McMahon for an oral storytelling workshop suitable for people aged 11 to adult based on the kind of folk tales the Brontës heard around their kitchen table. We’ll be weaving in powerful themes from their novels and stories: the wild moors, love and betrayal. Each workshop lasts 45 mins.
 Meet at the Aisled Barn, Wycoller Country