The Ill Will of the Jane-ators

The Bookseller presents a new sequel of Wuthering Heights that will be published next year:

HarperCollins will publish the “untold story of Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff” by Michael Stewart.
Clio Cornish, editor at the HarperCollins imprint HQ, acquired world all language rights for Ill Will from Jemima Forrester at David Higham Associates.
The title is described as a “superbly written piece of gothic fiction which authentically captures the bleak, earthy tone of Emily Bronte’s classic” and “dripping in atmosphere”.
A HarperCollins spokesperson said Bradford-based author, Stewart, had engaged with Bronte's legacy to write the book. They said: “Having worked closely with the Brontë Parsonage [the museum which contains the author's collections] for years, Stewart has immersed himself in the history of Wuthering Heights.”
The novel follows Heathcliff who has left left Wuthering Heights and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past. Along the way, he saves Emily, a Highwayman's daughter, from a whipping and the pair travel together stopping in graveyards along the way. They survive through Emily’s apparent ability to commune with the dead as the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England.
Stewart has written several stage plays and his debut novel, King Crow, which was published by independent, Hebden Bridge-based publisher, Bluemoose Books, in 2011 and won the Guardian’s Not-the-Booker Award. He is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield and is also the publisher of Grist Books.
The author revealed his unresolved questions over Bronte’s 1847 classic encouraged him to write the novel. He said: “Wuthering Heights was the first novel that obsessed me. For many years, I wondered what had turned Heathcliff from an ‘uncouth stable boy’ into a ‘gentleman psychopath’. Then, one day, walking across the same moor that Emily traipsed, an idea came to me.”
Cornish praised the title’s atmospheric setting and said it offers the “missing piece” of the puzzle of Heathcliff. He said: “Packed to the brim with windswept moors, crow-laden scaffolds, dark obsessions and terrible deeds, Ill Will is a perfect and extraordinarily inventive piece of gothic fiction.”
Forrester said: “It’s a compelling story – beautifully written and positively dripping in atmosphere.”
The title will be published in hardback, eBook and audio on 22nd March 2018. (Heloise Wood)

History Extra presents A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney:

Charlotte Brontë and Mary Taylor
The whitewashing of Jane Austen’s friendship with Anne left future generations of readers ill-equipped to assess the more radical side of Austen’s life and work. The author Charlotte Brontë, for instance, born just a year before Jane died, perhaps misguidedly regarded her forebear as a well-bred lady lacking in passion and grit – qualities that Charlotte herself rated highly.
Unlike Austen, Brontë has always been remembered as one of a group of literary women. But the accepted image of Charlotte as a devoted sister of Anne and Emily Brontë has overshadowed the other significant female friendships that she sought outside the home. One of the closest relationships Charlotte forged was with sharp-tongued radical Mary Taylor, who would eventually publish her first novel in her 70s.  (Read more) 

Theatress reviews the Jane Eyre performances in Milton Keynes:

Jane Eyre is a masterpiece – a demonstration of how to transform an old classic into a modern and relatable piece whilst staying true to the story that so many people love. Not only will it reignite the old love that so many people have for this story, but it certainly has the potential to win over an entire new generation of Jane fans. Perhaps we’ll call ourselves the Jane-ators or something snazzy like that. (Charlotte)

The Amherst Bulletin reviews the film... A Quiet Passion, of course:

Davies’ film makes other puzzling choices: Although the poetry of Longfellow is cited, as is the prose of the Brontës and George Eliot, there is no mention of Whitman, Emerson, Keats, Shakespeare, or the Brownings, all of whom were important to Dickinson’s development as an artist. Her beloved sister-in-law Susan Dickinson (Jodhi May) is woefully underdeveloped save for one private scene in which a hint of their intimacy is suggested. As Martha Nell Smith has shown in her study “Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson,” Susan Dickinson was an indispensable poetic collaborator and kindred spirit — and one of the great loves of Dickinson’s life. (Dickinson’s beloved canine companion, Carlo, named for St. John Rivers’ dog in Brontë’s Jane Eyre, also is absent. Restoring him to the story may have brought some much-needed levity.) (Emily Orlando)

The other favourite film of Brontë tidbits around is Lady Macbeth. On WBAA:

The wild terrain may put you in mind of Wuthering Heights, but this is a whole other kind of Gothic. Emily Brontë was never at liberty to vent the carnal steam given off by these two rebels, or its wider social implications. (Ella Taylor)

The Jewish Chronicle is probably right saying

It’s not even remotely interesting to read about happiness and fulfilment. If, when Jane Eyre rocked up to Thornfield Hall, Mr Rochester hadn’t already had a wife locked up in the attic, it’s unlikely we’d still be reading the book today. (Susan Reuben)

Electric Lit lists the worst weddings in literature:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The last thing you want to hear when you’re standing at the alter about to get married is that your intended already has a spouse. But such is Jane’s lot when one of her guests shouts out, “I declare the existence of an impediment,” forcing Mr. Rochester to admit that he’s been harboring a wife in his attic. Rochester’s defense is that his wife is completely crazy, but Jane’s not having it, and she leaves Thornfield, rendering herself penniless and homeless in the process. (Carrie V Mullins)

This article in The Gulf Today is particularly confusing:

Humanity has been angry about the [poverty] line, and has been so, for centuries. Among the angry, I am kind of familiar with, have been Marx, an assortment of purely theoretical Leftists, proven thinkers like Arnold, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Sartre, Lawrence, Hardy, Russell, Gibran, Iqbal and, of course, Emily Brontë. The list is unending. An entire forest won’t be enough to produce the amount of paper we would need to create the list. (Shaadaab S Bakht)