Signatures on the Brontë Way

Keighley News talks about one of the latest Brontë200 initiatives:

People are being invited to add their signature to a major new piece of artwork which will be created as part of Brontë birthday celebrations.
Large-scale textile works marking the famous signatures of the legendary literary sisters are to be installed on the Brontë Way footpath.
And internationally-acclaimed artist Lynn Setterington is seeking public input at a series of workshops.
The Sew Near-Sew Far project – a collaboration with the Brontë Parsonage Museum – is in support of Brontë200, a five-year programme celebrating the bicentenaries of the births of Charlotte in 2016, Branwell in 2017, Emily in 2018 and Anne in 2020.
Lynn said: "Signatures are an important marker of identity and the Brontë sisters famously used pseudonyms at their time of writing to disguise the fact they were women.
"I'm creating three artworks for the Brontë Parsonage Museum exploring the adopted and real signatures of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and I'm looking for local people to help me create them by sewing their own signatures into the pieces.
"We're looking for individuals and organisations that make a difference to their community – people who often go without thanks or praise for the amazing work they do. (...)
The finished artwork will go on display at sites near the Brontë Bridge and Waterfall from September 30 to October 15.
And a film documenting the collaboration will be screened later this year. (Alistair Shand)

Eastern Daily Press interviews Tim Delap, Rochester in the touring production of Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre:

 Did you know the book before taking on the role of Rochester?
Obviously it’s such a famous novel but I hadn’t read it before the audition which is kind of awful to admit. When I did read it I found that the image of people have of the book is not really what the book is about. It is seen as this very romantic novel, the cover is often very twee and the depiction of Jane as this meek and mild character, but it is not that at all. She is this incredibly firey, feisty, powerful character. That’s one of the things that Sally is so passionate about. It is an incredibly exciting novel, really energetic and I think this show reflects that and hopefully it will bring audiences and readers back to it.
Is there a misconception that it a bit of a girl’s book?
For some reason I always connected it to Jane Austen and they are so different. Charlotte Brontë’s voice is so unique and so powerful and this is just a brilliant feminist novel about equal rights and I think the show puts that across. The love story of Rochester and Jane is not you’re average romance either. There is a real meeting of minds. (Simon Parkin)

Norwich Evening News interviews Sally Cookson herself:

 What inspired you to adapt and direct Jane Eyre? Is it a book you particularly admired? 
I chose this particular title because it’s a story that I love and have enjoyed a close relationship with ever since I was intrigued as a child by Orson Well’s black and white melodrama with fabulous music by Bernard Hermann. I didn’t actually read the novel until I was in my early twenties - and I remember thinking while I read it: ‘this is a clarion cry for equal opportunities for women not a story about a passive female who will do anything for her hunky boss’. I was struck by how modern Jane seemed - her spirit and strong will, her peculiar and brilliant mind striving for personal freedom to be who she is, lashing out against any constraint that prevents her from being herself. She was exactly the sort of person I wanted to be. (Simon Parkin)

The Week asks the novelist Gail Godwin about her favourite novels:

Wuthering Heights - The Earnshaws held their own in the wild isolation of the Yorkshire moors until the day Mr. Earnshaw brought home a dirty, ragged boy from Liverpool. The sullen Heathcliff wins his way into the hearts of the father and daughter Cathy, and eventually becomes master of the place. Is Heathcliff the devil incarnate, or simply endowed with greater passion and single-minded willpower?

Austin360 reviews the play The Moors:

The plot of “The Moors” begins as a pastiche of Jane Eyre (and indeed there are other intentional nods to the Brontë sisters and their work along the way, mashing together bits of their novels’ plots), with spinster sisters Agatha and Huldey hiring a new governess, Emilie, to come work at their isolated home on the English moors. Emilie soon discovers that things at this house are not as she expected with the sisters, their absent brother who supposedly wrote to her, and their ambiguous servant who may be named Marjory or Mallory. (Andrew J. Friedenthal)

The Young Folks reviews Lady Macbeth:

Pugh runs a gamut of emotions, from coldly eating breakfast as a man dies in the next room to being a mother figure to a little boy. As her relationship with Sebastian intensifies the comparisons to Emily Brontë’s novel become more poignant, with Pugh and Jarvis canoodling on the moors – though, interestingly enough, Pugh’s Katherine dictates the terms of their undying love. Her final reveal at the end is a master class of fear and trembling. (Kristen Lopez)

In Midland Daily-News a columnist mentions the Brontës:

A Facebook friend of mine, Bernie, who is about 50 years old, is always doing something outdoors and always something very demanding. Nearly every Monday he posts a weekend picture of himself in a wetsuit, exiting the near-frozen waters of some North American lake, wearing a toothy grin. He'll have a caption about finishing a 12-mile swim in near-Olympic time and then riding his bike home some 40-odd miles.
Ok, we get it, Bernie. I sat home and watched a movie about the Bronte sisters. We have different ideas about recreation. (Dave Shanedshane)

Birth.Movies.Death posts about Rebecca:

For most of her career, Dame Daphne du Maurier was plagued by the title "romantic novelist," an epithet she felt unworthy of her work. Her best-known novel, Rebecca, is also her least understood, an elegant treatise on the power dynamics of marriage shrugged off as nothing more than a poor Jane Eyre facsimile, another disposable work of that most shameful genre, "women's fiction."  (Meredith Borders) 

And Book View Café compares both Rebecca and Jane Eyre.

Trouw (in Dutch) reviews Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman:

Een lekker leesbare roman over een verliefde kantoorjuffrouw, met een ondubbelzinnig positief slot? Dat riekt naar chicklit. Maar wie daarom dit debuut negeert, doet de schrijfster en zichzelf toch tekort. Eleanor Oliphant staat met twee stevige benen in de grote Britse 19de-eeuwse literatuur, van Jane Austen tot Charlotte Brönte’s ‘Jane Eyre’, niet toevallig het boek dat Eleanor tussen haar matras en de muur bewaart. (Marijke Laurense) (Translation)

SparklyPrettyBriiiight reviews Yuki Chan in Brontë Country; Smart Bitches Trashy Books talks about Norton Conyers and possible Jane Eyre connections. AnneBrontë.org posts about Thornton. Echo Daily covers the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event in Lismore. Libreriamo (Italy) recommends Jane Eyre in a horoscope (the things we report for the Brontës...) but just for Pisces. Finally, an alert from Washington D.C.:

Georgetown professor John Pfordresher appears at East City Bookshop discussing his new book, The Secret History of Jane Eyre: How Charlotte Brontë Wrote Her Masterpiece. In his book, Pfordresher explores the parallels between the book’s story and Brontë’s life and why she disavowed the book after it was written. Free, 6:30 PM. (Benjamin Freed in The Washingtonian)