The Character Pantheon

Keighley News summarises the upcoming West Yorkshire Playhouse Brontë season:

A major new season focusing on the lives and works of the Brontë Family begins at West Yorkshire Playhouse next month. (September)
The playhouse has worked with the Brontë Parsonage Museum to put on a series of high quality stage shows, as well as other events such as a debate, panel discussion and readings from letters written by the Brontës.
The first production in this season will be Northern Ballet's staging of Wuthering Heights, which runs from September 6 to 10.
Emily Brontë’s romantic masterpiece will be performed to live music by Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated Claude-Michel Schönberg, with choreography by David Nixon.
From September 24 to October 15 the playhouse will present Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, which has been "re-imagined" by Yorkshire writer Linda Marshall-Griffiths.
With echoes of the illness and loss that wracked Charlotte Brontë’s own life, the play will explore the redemptive power of love and the uncertainty of holding on to it.
From October 20 to 22 the theatre promises to present the Brontës in a radically new light, via a musical drama called Wasted.
This tells the story of misfit kids from a Yorkshire village yearning to be heard, finding fame beyond their wildest hopes and dying tragically young.
The drama has been billed as being full of energy, emotion and humour, with songs inspired by the Brontës' shocking, controversial genius.
Wasted has already won a prestigious award from the Kevin Spacey Foundation. (Miran Rahman)

We also read in Keighley News that Haworth's Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith (and member of the Brontë Society council) is leaving Haworth:

Haworth a new post in Eldwick.
The Rev Peter Mayo-Smith has been working in the village for seven years.
His last service in Haworth will be on January 8 next year, after which he will be moving to become minister at Eldwick Church.
"I have enjoyed myself and it's been wonderful to meet so many different people," he said.
"I want to be able to see Christmas through here because, of course, Christmas is such an important time in Haworth.
"I'll be very sorry to leave Haworth and Cross Roads, and I will miss it. But I am also excited to be going to Eldwick. It's a new challenge, which I'm looking forward to. (Miran Rahman)

Caitlin Moran has written a new introduction for the Picador 40th Anniversary of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (which is also on its 20th anniversary). The Times publishes it:

Bridget Jones is part of the character pantheon alongside Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara, Becky Sharp, Pippi Longstocking[.]

The Llangwm Literary Festival pays tribute to Charlotte Brontë... in a very bizarre way. Tenby Observer informs:

Literature, art and country life come together this weekend as a Pembrokeshire village plays host to Wales’s newest book festival - with the help of a cow called Charlotte.
Charlotte - named after the eldest of the Brontë sisters - has agreed to be the mascot for the inaugural Llangwm Literary Festival which starts today (Friday).

Chestnut Hill Local interviews a local scholar and author, Robert M. Ryan:

“I studied classical Greek for two years in college, and we read some of the ‘Odyssey’ in the original — but that language has since been all but driven out of my brain by inferior stuff. The same is true for Latin, in which as a high school kid I read Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ with great admiration. As for more recent writers, I never get tired of reading and rereading Dickens. I could throw Browning and Trollope and Emily Brontë and Joyce and Virginia Woolf into a list that would end with Bob Dylan and Stephen Sondheim.” (Len Lear)

Kingston Community News has an alert for August 15 at the Kitsap Regional Library, Kingston branch:

Classics Book Group: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Aug. 15. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. (Tomi Whalen)

A local Andalusia (Alabama) student recently visited England and particularly Haworth and Andalusia Star News publishes her thoughts about the visit:

My last weekend, I invested in a longer train ride up into the northwestern country of England, to Haworth, Yorkshire. Haworth is a small village that the country’s railway system does not reach. I had to change trains and get there via steam engine. The purpose of my journey to such a little village was the fact that the authors of my favorite books had lived and wrote there. Haworth is home to the Brontë Parsonage, where Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë all grew up. Their novels impacted me greatly growing up and so to see where they had lived and to hike up those hilly cobblestone roads just as they must have was an otherworldly experience, one that made shivers run down my spine. (Maia Meredith)

Berlingske (Denmark) has an article about the Brontës, particularly the Charlotte Brontë bicentenary:

Drama. De tre viktorianske Brontë-søstre, der udadtil levede et stilfærdigt liv, skabte lidenskabelige og dramatiske romaner, som stadig taler til os.
Har De lyst til en rigtig god sensommerlekture, så stift bekendtskab med den håndfuld romaner, der er skrevet af de engelske Brontë-søstre. Kender De dem allerede, så tag en af deres bøger frem igen og genopfrisk bekendtskabet – de tåler alle en genlæsning. For ønskes kvalitetsunderholdning med en spændende handling og masser af livsvisdom og menneskekundskab, så findes intet bedre valg end de tre søstre: Charlotte, Emily og Anne Brontë.
Af disse er nok Charlotte, der i år kan fejre sin 200 års fødselsdag, bedst kendt på grund af hendes roman »Jane Eyre« (1847, da. 1856 og senere), men de to andre søstres bøger er skam også værd at læse og på trods af de mange år, de har på bagen, er disse romaner langt mere moderne og aktuelle, end man umiddelbart skulle tro. (Sven Hakon Rossel) (Read more) ( Translation)

Patheos has an article about 'ugly feminists' and the Christian ethos which mentions Jane Eyre as an example of non-beautiful heroine.