Words and Rain

The Independent (Ireland) presents A Secret Sisterhood: The ­Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney:

Charlotte Brontë, well known for the bond she shared with sisters Anne and Emily, also enjoyed a radical friendship with another writer. The literary influence on Brontë of early feminist author Mary Taylor, who she first met at boarding school in 1831, has been hiding in plain sight all along. Ever since their schooldays, Taylor's outspoken, progressive views had widened the horizons of her more socially conservative friend. Not only did Taylor urge the aspiring novelist to earn her living by the pen, she surely inspired much of the radicalism of Jane Eyre. When Brontë died at the age of 38, Taylor made significant contributions to the first biography - written by another friend, Elizabeth Gaskell. However, Brontë's relationship with her more famous sisters has overshadowed Taylor's crucial influence on Charlotte's work.

Pitchfork interviews Neil Hastead, from the band Slowdive, on his song Sugar for the Pill:

Slowdive singer-guitarist Neil Halstead guests on the latest episode of “Song Exploder,” the podcast where artist break down their songs and explain how they were made. He discussed “Sugar for the Pill” from their recent self-titled LP. Halstead delves into the song’s gestation, playing clips of a demo and explaining how he merged electronic and live drums, as well as filling his guitar with bubble wrap to control the feedback. He also draws parallels between the song’s themes and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which he was reading around the time the song was written. (Jazz Monroe)

EDIT: Also in Fact.

The Huffington Post talks about the persistence of reading over other forms of entertainment:

Of course, like new and exciting ballets, styles of literature evolve and take on new shapes, and different genres emerge; even the words we use and read change over time. Read 'Jane Eyre', 'The Way We Live Now' or even 'Anne of Green Gables' to see the way language has evolved. (Fleur Morrison)

The 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death has triggered lots of articles. A few of them contain Brontë references:

[On Mansfield Park 1999] With its fierce takedown of patriarchy and colonialism, this adaptation is absolutely swimming in social relevance, but most Janeites consider its ramped-up romanticism too Brontë-ish. (And in Austenland, that’s a real dis.) (Alison Gillmor in Winnipeg Free Press)

 Aquest era el seu gènere, possiblement a causa -i espero que les feministes no m’ho blasmin- de tenir una visió del món concentrada, i del tot depenent de les notícies i les tafaneries que li explicaven les seves coneixences quan passaven a visitar-la. Es tractava, gairebé sempre, de qüestions amoroses i sentimentals, en el tractament de les quals Austen supera qualsevol novel·lista del seu temps, incloses les germanes Brontë. (Jordi Llovet in Ara) (Translation)

 Jane Austen dibuja ese universo con la misma minuciosidad que Charles Dickens pero a una escala mucho menor. Y no es romántica porque es inquisitiva y descriptiva (lo que la hace extremadamente moderna) pero no hay en sus novelas el menor desgarro pasional o una voluntaria mirada poética. Eso es precisamente lo que 30 años después de su muerte le reprochaba Charlotte Brontë (la primera autora convocada aquí para valorar a Austen) : «Orgullo y prejuicio es un lugar común; un jardín cuidadosamente vallado y cultivado, con bordes limpios y flores delicadas; pero ni un atisbo de una fisionomía vívida y luminosa, ningún campo abierto, nada de aire fresco», escribe a un crítico amigo suyo. (Elena Hevia in El Periódico) (Translation)

 Luego siguieron Mansfield Park, la gran tela de araña de la obra de Austen, y Emma, su personaje más eufórico y enérgico, que recibió un comentario muy favorable de Walter Scott, considerando que el talento de la autora se cifraba en la capacidad para volver extraordinarios personajes que a todos los lectores, en principio, habrían de resultarles comunes. Esto que para Scott merecía ser resaltado, para Charlotte Brontë era casi un delito: "Las novelas de Austen no son sino daguerrotipos de escenas comunes: un jardín cerrado de flores delicadas, pero nada de aire fresco, ni un vívido personaje brillante". (Juan Bonilla in El Mundo) (Translation)

The Times quotes Charlotte Brontë on Edinburgh:

For Charlotte Brontë it was poetry: “Brief, bright, clear and vital as a flash of lightning.” (Gilliam Bowditch)

The Sunday Times advises you to book for

Jane Eyre, Grand Theatre, Leeds, Mar 7-14, 2018, then touring
Northern Ballet had a hit last year with Cathy Marston’s brand-new choreography based on Charlotte Brontë’s novel. The show, with Philip Feeney’s music played live by the Northern Sinfonia, is being revived for NB’s spring season next year and will visit Belfast, Sheffield, Cardiff, London and Salford.

Also in The Sunday Times a review of The Last Wolf: The Hidden Springs of Englishness by Robert Winder:

Later, rain gave us the world’s first canal network, teaching the skills engineers later used for the world’s first railways. And rain is always there in the stories we tell. It rains in the first line of the Canterbury Tales and at the end of The Waste Land; it rains in King Lear and Bleak House, in Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights. The first line of VS Naipaul’s novel The Enigma of Arrival, set in rural Wiltshire, reads as follows: “For the first four days it rained.” (Dominic Sandbrook)

TeleAesse (Italy) recommends Jane Eyre:

Chi non ha mai sentito parlare della piccola Jane Eyre e dell’eccellente e intima scrittura di Charlotte Brontë? Vedere il film non mi era bastato. Sentivo il bisogno di averlo tra le mani e poterlo leggere fino all’ultima riga. (Elena Lombardi) (Translation)

The Irish Times and Lovin Dublin has pictures of The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in Dublin; Blue Mountains Gazette, ABC News, 9News, The Age and Illawarra Mercury shares the Australian events, Dagens Nyheter, Helsingborgs Dagblad and Uppsala Nya Tidning cover the Sweden events. Fosters covers the event in New Hampshire and Atlanta inTown in Atlanta...

C.S.Literary Jewelry reviews Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker. Bookland, viaggando tra I libri (in Italian) reviews Agnes Grey.