How well do you know the Brontës?

The publication of John Sutherland's The Brontësaurus is celebrated with this quiz in The Times by the author himself:

How well do you know the Brontës?
With the publication of his Brontësaurus, John Sutherland sets the ultimate quiz on the lives and work of the extraordinary sisters.
1 Match the Brontë sister to her novel(s):
Charlotte; Emily; Anne
Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; Agnes Grey; Shirley; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Villette; The Professor
2 In which order were the Brontë sisters born?
3 And in which order did they die?
4 “Charlotte Brontë”, or the sex-neutral pseudonym “Currer Bell”, is the name on all her title pages, but not the name she died with. What was Charlotte’s surname at the time of her death? (...)

The Advertiser (Australia) has another quiz which contains a Brontë question:

19 Which 1847 book by English author Charlotte Brontë ends: “Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!”? (Marty Smith)

Also in The Times an anecdote of the shooting of Jane Eyre 2011 on Broughton Castle:

A few indentations in a 16th-century elm table in the undercroft are of a more recent vintage – the shooting of the 2011 movie Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. “They were using this room as a dining room, and one day I came in and found the crew slicing a loaf of bread on it. ‘Stop!’ I said. ‘It’s the oldest thing in the house!’ (James Reginato)

FoxNews reminds us that today takes place the auction of the Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey envelopes which we mentioned earlier:

The envelopes, which are being auctioned by Henry Aldridge & Son, are addressed to Brontë’s best friend and confidante Ellen Nussey. One envelope has a black mourning band on the border and is written on by Bronte in brown ink. The envelope, which has a Penny Red stamp, is postmarked Jan. 30, 1849.
The letter was sent shortly after the deaths of Charlotte’s younger sister Emily, author of “Wuthering Heights,” and her brother Branwell.
Another envelope, also addressed in Bronte’s hand with a Penny Red Stamp, is postmarked 1846. A small scrap printed 'Attend to Time,' is fixed to the reverse of the envelope.
“These covers represent a small part of English literary history,” Henry Aldridge & Son auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told FoxNews.com, via email, noting that Nussey first met Bronte in 1831.“Anything related to Charlotte is desirable but to have a pair of covers written by her to her closet friend offers an incredible opportunity to a collector or museum.” (James Rogers)

The National Heritage Memorial Fund showcased the importance of  the Brontë Society buying ‘Mrs Brontë’s Book’ in annual report. Keighley News says:

he National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) gave the society £170,000 towards the cost of the copy of Robert Southey’s The Remains of Henry Kirke White.
Maria Brontë owned the book and it contains annotated scribblings by her daughter Charlotte, author of classic novel Jane Eyre.
The book is one of the rare surviving possessions of Maria, and was greatly treasured by the Brontë family while they were living at the parsonage in Haworth.
Amy Rowbottom, a member of the curatorial team at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, this week tweeted about the NHMF report.
She wrote: “@BronteParsonage thrilled to see the generous grant we received in the NHMF's latest report. Thank you!”
She later told the Keighley News that Mrs Brontë’s Book was a significant acquisition by the society.
She added: “We continue to be appreciative that the significance of the book was recognised by the NHMF and that their generosity enabled it to return to the museum where it will go on display next year.”
The book was bought earlier this year with added financial support from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the National Libraries.
Members of the Brontë Society were treated to a first glimpse of the book at their annual summer festival.
The NHMF report stated: “After Mrs Brontë’s early death the book became a treasured family item. (David Knights)

Also in Keighley News a report on the sale of Ashmount House in Haworth:

Ashmount Country Hotel, in Mytholmes Lane, dates back to 1870. It was originally built for Dr Amos Ingham, who was physician to Charlotte Brontë.
The building was constructed after Dr Ingham, who was then the village surgeon, looked after both Charlotte and her father Patrick before their deaths in 1855 and 1861.
He is understood to have been the source of the story about the troubled Brontë son, Branwell, setting fire to his own bed while drunk. The doctor was present when Charlotte died.
Ashmount was bought by its current owners just over 10 years ago, and first run as a bed and breakfast business. Since then it has become a luxury small hotel and guest house.
Leisure property specialists Fleurets is marketing the property’s freehold and seeking offers of around £650,000. (Mira Rahman)

Daily Express recommends some TV shows for this winter season:

To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters BBC1
The Brontë sisters are literary heroines who wrote masterful fiction, but their real lives were also fraught with drama. This one-off story, written by Happy Valley’s Sally Wainwright and filmed in Yorkshire, explores the relationship in the Brontë household between gifted sisters Charlotte (Finn Atkins), Emily (Chloe Pirrie) and Anne (Charlie Murphy) and their troubled brother Branwell (Adam Nagaitis), who sank into alcoholism and drug addiction.
The incomparable Jonathan Pryce, recently seen as Game of Thrones’ terrifying High Sparrow, plays the patriarch, the Reverend Patrick Brontë.

Chortle remembers how Bridget Christie

wrote a pilot about the Brontë sisters in 2008, but the show – made with production house Tiger Aspect – wasn’t picked up. (Jay Richardson)

The Tribune (India) and jaggernauts:

I have not visited the Jagannath temple at Puri although it features on my ‘bucket list’(to-do list before ‘kicking the bucket’; slang for dying). I stumbled upon the word ‘Juggernaut’ while reading Jane Eyre. Brontë’s heroine asserts white female independence and warns her fiancé not to see her as equal to or “worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut.” (Ratna Raman)

Books at 60 explores the world of bookmarks:

The second is a much loved and much used paper bookmark, so well-used it fell apart when I picked it up. There’s a sketch of Charlotte Brontë and a little verse to the effect that we have to accept the rain if want the roses in our life. My daughter bought it for me at Haworth. (Vivienne Beddoe)

Anne Rice is promoting her new book and gets interviewed in Atlas Obscura:

Why do you think the world needs fantasy fiction? (Mariana Zapata)
The world has always needed art in all forms including sculpture, painting, architecture and poetry and prose stories. Most of the great literature of the world is fantasy fiction. We’ve only known a short time in history when anyone thought “realism” was a practical idea for great literature. Literary history is dominated by Homer’s heroes and heroines, Virgil’s heroes and heroines, Shakespeare’s kings and queens, and gods and goddesses, and his witches and his ghosts, and the brilliant fantasies of the Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens. Fantasy fiction embraces the highest literary values: plot, spectacle, suspense, great persons, tragedy, pity, catharsis.

Baltimore Magazine interviews the associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Hersh:

Why do you think younger people aren’t connecting with the symphony? (Gabriella Souza)
It’s a difficult question. I think a lot of it is that music education skipped a generation or two, and we were the ones who got left out. I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who were more interested in classical music than the norm. But coming through school, there wasn’t nearly as much emphasis on how to listen and experience these great Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Mahler pieces. In the same way that you take English class to be able to analyze the Brontë sisters or F. Scott Fitzgerald, you need this music education in order to experience a lot of these high-level pieces.

Berfrois on the afterlives of literary characters:

The “reality” of fictional characters is strange, yet despite the innate weirdness of fiction, the impulse to try and guess what “happens” independent of the text itself to characters like Ishmael, Jane Eyre, Holden Caulfield or Nick Caraway. (Ed Simon)

The Italian edition of The Huffington Post reviews Lettori Selvaggi by Giuseppe Montesano:

Dai presocratici alla Bhagavadgītā, dai mistici a Neẓāmī, da Kafka a Marianne Moore, da Pessoa a Ungaretti, dalle sorelle Brontë a Majakovskij, da Brancati a Moravia, da Omero a Bolaño: il cammino si compie attraverso un'indagine squisitamente basata su studi non ostentati, ma assimilati e che si vogliono condividere con competenza, stimolando suggestioni, energie, emozioni. (Marilu Oliva) (Translation)

The BBC new Poldark is coming to Italy. La Stampa talks about it:

Ma i tempi sono cambiati, e anche Poldark: inizia per lui un non facile percorso di riscatto sociale, economico e umano, che la fortuna avversa tenta di ostacolare in ogni modo, secondo le regole del romanzo ottocentesco, che li vuole i suoi eroi alteri, maledetti e straordinariamente affascinanti, dall’Heathcliff di «Cime tempestose» al mr. Darcy di «Orgoglio e pregiudizio». (Adriana Marmimoli) (Translation)

An alert for today in Fregene, Italy:

Sabato 19 novembre, ore 18,00. Biblioteca Fregene. Gino Pallotta
Le arti sul piccolo e grande schermo. Dalla letteratura alla televisione e al cinema: le eroine senza tempo di Austen, Brontë e Gaskell
‘Ma che bel castello…’: l’importanza della location nelle serie e nei film in costume. A cura di Valeria Guidotti.

La Libre (Belgium) reviews Une Vie:

Comme l’Anglaise Andrea Arnold l’avait fait avec "Les Hauts de Hurlevent", [Stephane] Brizé refuse en effet toute forme d’académisme, porte sur ce classique de la littérature française un regard très singulier. (Hubert Heyrendt) (Translation)