Mr Rochester, My Cousin Rachel and Draco Malfoy

WhatsGoodToDo reviews Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre as seen at Glasgow's Theatre Royal, giving it 5 out of 5 stars.

Some of the highlights for me was the clever way that they used multiple actors surrounding Jane as they spoke out her thoughts as she wrestled with what to do. I really fell in love with Rochester’s faithful dog, Pilot, who was played by Paul Mundell; gave a fun and humorous performance. Another part, where Jane was travelling by coach, depicted by a group running on the spot and the calling out of different stops; but then they needed to stop for that all important toilet break! They all moved to a part of the stage, then the woman squatted and men stood – this was clever but really funny as normally life’s needs are forgotten!
This was one of the best shows I have ever seen! (Deborah Mackenzie)

iNews features the new book A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney

When Woolf was trying to come to terms with the loss of Mansfield, she had no idea that her literary forebears had relied upon similarly close bonds with other female writers. The early biographies painted Eliot, Brontë and Austen as isolated individuals. Eliot supposedly endured a lonely existence, ostracised for “living in sin” with the literary critic George Henry Lewes. Brontë and her similarly forsaken sisters languished in a moorland parsonage. [...]
Further back, in 1831, Charlotte Brontë sought a creative alliance beyond her family – one that would eventually take her far from her parsonage home. As a boarder at Roe Head School in Yorkshire, she forged one of her closest friendships with the sharp-tongued, radical Mary Taylor, who would go on to publish the early feminist novel Miss Miles. A decade later, Taylor persuaded Brontë to set sail with her for the Belgian capital of Brussels. Here, both women studied European languages, and Brontë’s two years in this foreign city, where she fell in love with her married tutor, inspired her future books Villette and The Professor.
As the years passed, Taylor encouraged her friend to make her work more political, and a character based on the spirited Taylor – Rose Yorke – even made it into the pages of Brontë’s novel Shirley.

BookBub Blog recommends '10 Books for ‘Downton Abbey’ Fans Coming Out This Summer', including

Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker
“Reader, she married me.”
For 170 years, Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature’s most romantic, most complex, and most mysterious heroes. Sometimes haughty, sometimes tender-professing his love for Jane Eyre in one breath and denying it in the next-Mr. Rochester has for generations mesmerized, beguiled, and, yes, baffled fans of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece. But his own story has never been told.
Now, out of Sarah Shoemaker’s rich and vibrant imagination, springs Edward: a vulnerable, brilliant, complicated man whom we first meet as a motherless, lonely little boy roaming the corridors and stable yards of Thornfield Hall. On the morning of Edward’s eighth birthday, his father issues a decree: He is to be sent away to get an education, exiled from Thornfield and all he ever loved. As the determined young Edward begins his journey across England, making friends and enemies along the way, a series of eccentric mentors teach him more than he might have wished about the ways of the men-and women-who will someday be his peers.
But much as he longs to be accepted-and to return to the home where he was born-his father has made clear that Thornfield is reserved for his older brother, Rowland, and that Edward’s inheritance lies instead on the warm, languid shores of faraway Jamaica. That island, however, holds secrets of its own, and not long after his arrival, Edward finds himself entangled in morally dubious business dealings and a passionate, whirlwind love affair with the town’s ravishing heiress, Antoinetta Bertha Mason.
Eventually, after a devastating betrayal, Edward must return to England with his increasingly unstable wife to take over as master of Thornfield. And it is there, on a twilight ride, that he meets the stubborn, plain, young governess who will teach him how to love again.
It is impossible not to watch enthralled as this tender-hearted child grows into the tormented hero Brontë immortalized-and as Jane surprises them both by stealing his heart. Mr. Rochester is a great, sweeping, classic coming-of-age story, and a stirring tale of adventure, romance, and deceit.
Release date: Out now (Shayna Murphy)

Grazia Daily lists '11 Brilliant Period Dramas To Stream On Netflix' such as Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights

There have been many attempts to bring Wuthering Heights to screens big and small, but the fact remains that Emily Brontë's only novel tends to elude straightforward adaptations: it's far too weird and uncomfortable a proposition for that. But director Andrea Arnold (the woman behind Fishtank and last year's American Honey)'s take on the classic is anything but straightforward. Ditching the bonnets and flowery speeches (and generating some flustered headlines for casting a black actor, James Howson, as Heathcliff) this is Wuthering Heights redux, a film that's as stark and moody as Brontë's original. (Katie Rosseinsky)

A couple of reviews of the new film adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel mention the Brontës:

Despite her Gallic name, novelist Daphne du Maurier was a master of English-gothic romances—a latter-day Brontë sister, with Jackie Collins hovering nearby on the foggy moors. (Ken Eisner in The Georgia Straight)

Weisz is a very good actress, but she can be a cold one — even her passions sometimes arrive feeling second-guessed. Initially, this makes her a natural for the role of cousin Rachel, a figure that hovers ambiguously between eras and genres. Is she a stone-hearted schemer, a film noir femme fatale decades ahead of schedule? Or is she a wronged heroine who has wandered in from the Brontë sisters’ moors? (Ty Burr in The Boston Globe)

The past and present of women writers in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Fans take selfies with Elizabeth Gilbert after a panel, while Charlotte Brontë wrote under the pseudonym "Currer Bell" because female authors weren't (and arguably still aren't) to be taken seriously. When authors once received letters via snail mail, they're now just one click away from fans' tweets and comments on their Facebook pages. (Michelle Law)

Gulf News features British cultural historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett, who

had an old-fashioned and privileged English country childhood: “This is going to sound sadly Jane Eyre-ish but to begin with I was taught at home by a governess,” she says. The teacher, Mrs Shaw, lived in the attic and there were up to half a dozen children in the class. “It really didn’t follow any kind of national curriculum, we studied literature by learning poetry off by heart.” (Susanna Rustin)

A fan of Harry Potter's archenemy Draco Malfoy writes about her 'crush' on Mashable:

At the same time, Draco, in being enlisted to do Voldemort's bidding, suddenly became this taciturn and oh-so mature Heathcliff type. And I was into it. I can't help it, I just love those moody, mercurial villains. (Rachel Thompson)

Sixth Tone celebrates 40 years of 'gaokao' (China’s national college entrance exam) and the columnist recalls a time when

Even before 1977, I secretly studied with my colleagues, who were all educated youth. Publicly, we set up philosophy study groups and read books by Karl Marx and Mao. Privately, we exchanged any books we could find, such as [Leo Tolstoy’s] “Resurrection” and [Charlotte Brontë’s] “Jane Eyre.” Back then, you’d be condemned for lacking revolutionary spirit if you were found reading these books. (Wang Yiwei)

The Daily Mail has an article on roses and quotes Anne Brontë's most famous sentence. El Economista (Mexico) finds echoes of the Brontës in Sarah Waters' books. Derek Winnert reviews Wuthering Heights 1970. SparkLife challenges you to differentiate Regina Spektor's lyrics from Jane Eyre quotes.