"Who wouldn’t want to work here?”

The Independent has an extensive and very interesting interview with Kitty Wright, executive director of the Brontë Society (and in the words of the journalist: 'possible saviour of the Brontë Society'). We bring you some of the highlights but please read it fully:

“I’m not saying I’m succeeding where others have failed, just that with no-one in this post for 18 months there was something of a leadership vacuum. I suppose if I’ve done anything I’ve tried to create a climate of permission, of optimism and energy.”
She is constantly talking about the hard work of the core management and administration team that is based with her in a few rooms at the back of the parsonage – even as executive director, she shares her office with three other people – and bursts with almost visible pride at the work they do there.
“I would never say I’m proud of them, because that implies some kind of ownership of them, I think,” says Wright carefully. “It’s more that I’m proud to be working with them. They’re all brilliant. I’d die in a ditch for them, I really would.” (...)
The parsonage already attracts international visitors – a group of Japanese tourists are browsing the exhibits while I’m there – but Wright wants to get the word out with a much stronger online presence. She has a vision of an “augmented reality” website, digital maps, digitised texts from the stock of exhibits: in essence, making their online presence an extension of the physical museum rather than, as Wright calls it, “just an electronic brochure”. (...)
“Up there is an underground reservoir,” she says. “It was fed by springs and was built after Patrick Brontë’s work on improving the sanitation in Haworth. We’re hoping to launch a fundraising campaign next year to create a centre for contemporary women’s writing there, a flexible space that could host events, exhibitions, be hired by creative people who want to write, hold classes…”
It’s an ambitious project, Wright knows – it’ll cost between £2.5 and £3m, depending on how easy or difficult it is to run utilities up to it, and that’s without taking into account actually getting planning permission… and what the rest of the members of the Brontë Society think about building on the land. (...)
The local authority, Bradford Council is consulting on closing several tourist information centres in the district, Haworth among them. The centre is currently located in a small building that, in 1928, was the first office of the Brontë Society. Wright thinks it would be a pleasing symmetry for the society to take back the building and run the tourist information service from it themselves, as well as providing more space for the management and administrative staff.
There’s another plan as well, which she says is merely “a glint in our eyes”. “Did you see To Walk Invisible? There was a barn in that, that used to stand just outside the parsonage. It would be fantastic to recreate that, make it a curatorial and research space, with an interpretive exhibition, perhaps…” (...)
If the Brontë Society’s past troubles really were down to an ideological clash between traditionalists and modernisers, it seems that they might have found the perfect solution, because in appointing Kitty Wright as their executive director, they appear to have got both. (David Barnett)

Sally Wainwright talks about her new project, an eight-episode BBC drama on Anne Lister's diaries: Shibden Hall. In The Independent (Ireland):

She added: “Anne Lister’s diary is four million words long, I’m not using it all, I’m writing about her from 1832 onwards, but my only previous experience of period drama based on true lives I’ve had is To Walk Invisible (about the Brontës) so this is something new. (Laura Harding)

Education Guide to Everything lists the bravest leading ladies and real-life heroines:

Jane Eyre. Perhaps literature’s earliest feminist heroines, Charlotte Brontë’s enduring character remained honorable and unwavering despite the many hardships she faced.

An author in The Deccan Herald:

But alas, I didn’t like the hero Will Darcy, so my novel could never become a second Pride and Prejudice without him. Imitate the other popular novel-Wuthering Heights then? With that devil Heathcliff as the hero? Good god, no modern heroine would agree to walk into that, I mean in my Wuthering Heights! Then? Do I try my hand at bringing out a second Gone with the Wind? “Hey Ram, it will be like attempting a Mahabharata!” What then? (Nuggehalli Pankaja)

The Indian actress and model Mouni Roy has visited the Parsonage as seen on her Instagram.

Respublika (Lithuania) reminds recent literary discoveries, like Charlotte Brontë's poem and short story found on a copy of Robert Southey’s The Remains of Henry Kirke White owned by her mother:

Šarlotės Brontės plunksnos bandymas
Atrodė, kad apie Šarlotės Brontės (Charlotte Bronte) - vienos iš garsiųjų seserų Brončių, kurių romanai XIX a. viduryje sukėlė sensaciją ir vėliau buvo pripažinti anglų literatūros klasika, - kūrybą yra žinoma viskas. Tačiau 2015 m. tarp knygos „Henrio Kerko Vaito literatūrinis palikimas“, priklausiusios jos motinai, puslapių tyrinėtojai rado nežinomą apsakymą ir eilėraštį, kuriuos „Džeinės Eir“ autorė parašė būdama 17-os. Trumpame eilėraštyje Š.Brontė piešia įsivaizduojamą Angrijos šalį, kurioje gyvena jos artimieji, o apsakyme išjuokė savo tėvo nedraugą pastorių Džoną Vinterbotomą. (Milda Kunstaité) (Translation)

Tom Nicholas vlogs about the Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre performances in Plymouth; Moonglotexas reviews the recent Manga Classics adaptation of Jane Eyre; Reverse Delay posts about Hihintayin Kita Sa Langit 1991. Nick Holland on AnneBronte.org posts about Anne as a Sunday School Teacher.