Anne’s bravery as a woman and as a novelist

Writer Anna Carey reviews Samantha Ellis's biography of Anne Brontë, Take Courage, for The Irish Times.

 Yes, she is much less well known than her sisters. But in her own way, she was a more radical writer. While they elevated elements of the gothic to high art that still has the power to thrill 170 years later, Anne kept her feet firmly on the ground and in doing so created one of the most gripping, groundbreaking feminist novels of the 19th century.
Do I sound a bit defensive? Well, us Anne fans often do. For most of the last 170 years she’s been seen, as Samantha Ellis puts it, as “boring. Gentle. Pious. Meek. The less talented Brontë, the one in her sisters’ shadow, the other Brontë.” But in recent years things have been changing. Last year saw the publication of Sam Baker’s excellent thriller The Woman Who Ran, a modern retelling of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. More recently, To Walk Invisible, Sally Wainwright’s superb BBC film about the Brontës, showed Anne as a determined young woman, passionate about her work. [...]
This personal approach might feel self-indulgent if Ellis weren’t such an engaging, perceptive and sympathetic writer. Luckily she is, and her personal approach is the source of both the book’s immense charm and also its considerable power. All biographers are subjective, whether they admit it or not, and there’s something refreshing about one who freely admits that she’s enraged by Charlotte’s patronising attitude to her sister, finds it hard to forgive Elizabeth Gaskell for the effect she had on Anne’s reputation and feels immense sympathy for the Brontës’ father Patrick, an Irish immigrant who supported his brilliant children’s creativity and, after all six had died, continued to campaign for social justice. [...]
Ellis is inspired by Anne’s bravery as a woman and as a novelist, and ultimately the book is a deeply moving depiction of how reading and writing allows us to forge an emotional and intellectual connection with someone who died over a century before we were born. By the time Ellis reaches Anne’s grave, on a sunny hillside in Scarborough, she’s in tears, and so was I.

Foyles interviews Vic James about her first novel, Gilded Cage.

The slavetown’s underground internet, ‘NoBird’ – ‘Asif, you do the talking, and I’ll get us a secure line out through NoBird.’The Millmoor Games and Social Club, which secretly works to alleviate conditions inside the slavetown of Millmoor, operates a parallel internet called ‘NoBird’. I lifted the name from Jane’s passionate declaration in Jane Eyre that ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’ It felt like the right statement for this feisty group of troublemakers.

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reports that the Friends of the Red House have an idea (in a Marcel Duchamp box-in-a-suitcase installations kind of way) to keep the museum alive and also shows some pictures and a short video from the last public event held at the Red House Museum.

A ‘museum in a box’ scheme hopes to keep the memories of the Red House Museum alive.
The Gomersal museum, which closed on December 21, has inspired the Friends of Red House to create a box containing nostalgic items and information about Red House and the history of the Spen Valley. [...]
There are plans for a Red House box to join the range of around 12 boxes available from Kirklees Museums Service. Each box contains around 20 multi-sensory objects and an information pack.
The Red House and Spen Valley box could include items relating to life and work in Victorian times at Red House - anyone interested in helping to compile this new box can attend a meeting [today] (Tuesday) at 2pm at Oakwell Hall.
The Friends of Red House group is being wound up following the closure of the museum. Chairwoman Jacqueline Ryder said: “Our thoughts are with the staff, who are facing an uncertain future as their work is re-organised and some may have to consider redundancy.’ (Samantha Gildea)

Travel Weekly announces that Emily Brontë is to have her own ship, courtesy of Riviera Travel.

Riviera Travel is offering agents the chance to become Godmothers of its new five-star ships.
The winning agents will attend the naming and launch ceremony in Amsterdam of the MS Thomas Hardy and MS Emily Brontë in February.
Marketing director at Riviera Travel, Ben Hitchcock, said: “This is the first time we have officially christened our river cruise ships and given
them their all-important Godmothers.
“Our travel agents are such a vital part of our business that we felt it was only right to honour them by making them the ships’ first Godmothers.” [...]
Both the Thomas Hardy and Emily Brontë will accommodate up to 169 passengers with 44 in-house trained staff. (Phil Davies)

Maria Grazia Chiuri's collection for Dior reminds ABC (Spain) of

Caperucita con capa y capucha negra, princesas medievales, Jane Eyre y su ama de llaves, la película «Los Otros» y delicadisimas bellas durmientes (María Luisa Funes) (Translation)

We do wonder whether they actually mean Rebecca de Winter and Mrs Danvers, because we don't really know what to make of a collection reminiscent of Jane Eyre and, perhaps, Mrs Fairfax.

Culturamas (Spain) highlights the works of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. On the Brussels Brontë Blog, Eric Ruijssenaars celebrates Anne Brontë's birthday belatedly by posting some European covers of her works. The Leavis Society shares some of QD Leavis's thoughts on Wuthering Heights.