Jane started in Manchester

Broadway World UK posts pictures of the new performances of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre production now on tour:

Sally Cookson's energetic and imaginative new adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece - Jane Eyre - has just begun a major, 21-city tour of the UK, culminating in a return to the NT's Lyttelton Theatre from 26 September to 21 October 2017. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
The highly acclaimed co-production between the National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic opened at The Lowry in Salford on 8 April 2017 and continues its journey around the country to Sheffield, Aylesbury, Plymouth, Southampton, Edinburgh, York, Woking, Glasgow, Richmond, Canterbury, Cardiff, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Milton Ke
ynes, Norwich, Brighton, Leeds, Belfast, Aberdeen, Birmingham and Hull, where it will be part of the City of Culture programme from 18-23 September 2017.

ITV News presents the Manchester performances of the tour with a reminder of the Brontë connections in Manchester:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a classic love story, and closely associated Brontë sister's home of West Yorkshire.
But the novel was started in Manchester, as Caroline Whitmore has been finding out.

Oxford Times reviews the recent performances of the Oxford Young Players of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre:

A measure of how well this slick production, faultlessly directed by Jo Noble, worked, was that, after a few short moments, I forgot I was watching an amateur youth production at all. The acting was polished, the set imaginative and the ensemble pieces beautifully choreographed (extraordinary credit to designer Anna Lewis, movement director Emma Webb and music director Matt Winkworth).
This was no slavish run-through; it was a brooding, haunting production, framed by a skeletal, mouldering building – variously Gateshead Hall, Lowood School and Thornfield – each haunted by the tormented figure of the insane Bertha, pacing her cell-like room in her blood-red skirt, a coiled spring of passion and anger, played with graceful abandon by Jessica Algie. Against this tense backdrop, Jane (the fabulous Zoe Denton), embarks on her roller coaster emotional ride. Until, that is, the interval.
When we return it is all different. The cast have all swapped places. While initially disorientating it proves a fun device and a great way for the actors to get their teeth into new roles. (Tim Hughes)

Good news for the book The Brontës: Children of the Moors by Mick Manning and Brita Granström. It has been nominated for the 2017 English Association 4-11 Best Picture Book Awards. The winners will be known next May 10th.

National Post reviews the film Maudie, directed by Aisling Walsh:

As told in Maudie, young Lewis (née Dowley) is living with her aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) in Digby, N.S., and chafing under the woman’s controlling presence. When she sees a help-wanted ad in the general store for a live-in housekeeper, she impulsively heads down the road to the home of Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke), which doesn’t look big enough to handle a live-in goldfish. Lewis probably had to go outside just to stretch his thinking, although in the early going there’s little evidence of that. Brutish in the manner of a Brontë antihero, he barks at her from their first meeting, and in one cringe-worthy scene hauls off and smacks her. (Chris Knight)

Slant Magazine reviews another film, a usual suspect in recent news rounds:  A Quiet Passion by Terence Davies:

The austere texture of Emily's existence is admittedly far from that of a protagonist like The Long Day Closes's Bud, a boy wrapped up in the joys of cinema and song, but the only forms of entertainment available to the Dickinsons in rural Massachusetts before and after the Civil War were newspapers, Charlotte Brontë novels if they were lucky enough to get ahold of them, and one another's company. (Carson Lund)

The Film Stage interviews its director:

The Film Stage: What drew you to making this, not typical, biopic of Emily Dickinson’s life? Why her as a subject? (Diana Drumm)
Terence Davies: I discovered her when I was 18. Claire Bloom was reading her work on television. And the first one was “Because I could not stop for Death.” So I bought the anthology and I didn’t really know about her life because it had just a little preface about when she lived and when she died and all about that. It was about five or six years ago that I really started to re-read her. And I thought, “I’ve got to do what her life was like” and found this extraordinary life. Reminding me more and more of the Brontës. They didn’t go anywhere and look at what they produced, and she was the same. I thought this inner life was very, very rich.

The Kansas City-Star reviews the new film Voice from the Stone:

Moving between supernatural and rational tones, Twin Cities director Eric Howell’s feature-film debut is magnetically moody, creating the spirit of a Hitchcock version of “Jane Eyre.” (Colin Covert)

Den of Geek! reviews The Handmaiden by Park Chan-Wook:

The effect is vaguely akin to a gothic novel like Wuthering Heights in its story of repressed desires and secret obsessions, albeit laced with explicit sex scenes and the odd dab of violence that would have left the Brontë sisters blushing into their handkerchiefs. (Ryan Lamble)

National Geographic expresses concern about the future of Scottish moors:

A moor is also the bleak backdrop of gothic literature and Hollywood epics: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. (Cathy Newman)

The Washington Post vindicates the writer David Jones:

He was also writing. “In Parenthesis,” his epic prose poem about World War I, appeared in 1937 and later won the Hawthornden Prize. Its models, says Dilworth, included Malory, the Mass, “Wuthering Heights” and “Moby-Dick,” while its linguistic richness derived from the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” section of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake,” Cockney slang and the compacted poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. (Michael Dirda)

LitHub lists first novels which are also the best novels of an author:

Perhaps it’s because Jane Eyre is actually the second novel Charlotte Brontë wrote (her first attempt, The Professor, did not secure a publisher until later), but this is one of the most assured debuts I’ve ever read—and was erotic enough to send Victorian readers into a tizzy. (Then again, what wasn’t?) Some may claim Villette as Brontë’s true masterpiece, but the fact that Jane Eyre could inspire a response novel that is as much of a classic as the original text proves its enduring importance. (Emily Temple)

The recent publication of the French translations of some of the Brontë letters has triggered some articles in the French press about the Brontës. Le Figaro publishes a dossier:

Les sœurs Brontë sont aux Anglais ce que Victor Hugo est aux Français, un monument de la littérature nationale. Charlotte, Emily et Anne, trois sœurs auxquelles il faut rajouter un frère, Branwell, et un père, le révérend Patrick Brontë, qui éleva seul ses enfants à la mort prématurée de sa femme Maria. Trois sœurs qui écrivaient et un frère qui les y encouragea ont donné sept romans devenus des classiques. Deux particulièrement se sont hissés au-delà des modes, Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent écrit par Emily et Jane Eyre écrit par Charlotte. À l'époque de leur parution en 1847, ces romans signés sous pseudonyme masculin défrayèrent la chronique par leur ton et leur modernité.  (Françoise Dargent) (Translation)

In the dossier an interview with Tracy Chevalier can be read. The author is also writing in another French newspaper, La Vie:

Alors que sort en France la correspondance de la mythique famille, la romancière Tracy Chevalier nous entraîne dans le Yorkshire où ont vécu les sœurs Brontë. (Marie Chaudey)
L'austère presbytère surgit au détour d'une rue en pente raide. Briques grises, fenêtres sévèrement alignées. À quelques pas du perron, sous les pins sombres, le vieux cimetière aux pierres tombales mangées de mousse semble émerger intact du passé. Des poules y ont élu domicile, qui picorent et caquettent sous la bruine, glissant leur note champêtre au milieu des visiteurs. L'église familière, gardienne des âmes, égrène les heures au clocher. Derrière le presbytère, une sente boueuse mène directement au vert des collines, où les moutons paissent entre les murets de pierre. À l'horizon, la lande est toute proche, qui touche le ciel gros de bourrasques.
Nous y sommes. Sur les coteaux du Yorkshire, dans le nord de l'Angleterre, dans le village de Haworth, où le révérend Patrick Brontë s'installa avec sa famille en 1820. Mais aussi dans les pages de nos fiévreuses lectures de jeunesse, les Hauts de Hurle-Vent et Jane Eyre, romans cultes de la littérature anglaise écrits il y a deux siècles par des jeunes femmes à l'esprit vif et au cœur tourmenté, si loin des lumières des villes – aujourd'hui encore, Leeds est distante de plus d'une demi-heure par le train.  (...) (Translation)

Vertigo (in Flemish) reviews the film The Young Lady:

Hoewel Chabrols versie van Madame Bovary stilistisch verwant lijkt, doet de hele toon van Lady Macbeth nog het meest denken aan Wuthering Heights van Andrea Arnold. (Chris Craps) (Translation)

Derbyshire Times reports the rare chance to rent North Lees Hall; The Weston Mercury presents the upcoming performances of We Are Brontë in Weston-super-Mare. History Things has an article on Anne Brontë; My East Rand and A Great Book Study post about Wuthering Heights. Linnet Moss talks about Rochester and Jane's final reunion on page and screen.