“One of the greatest, if not the greatest, love stories ever written”

KWBU has begun a series on all the novels by the Brontës. The first to be featured is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

When I first dreamed of teaching college English Literature, my heart was set on studying the Brontës—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.  It has been some time since I read any of the works by these women, so I am now going to embark on reading them all again.  My first is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne.  I only read it twice, and I was not as impressed as I was with the other two authors. [...]
My attitude toward this novel has turned 180 degrees after this read.  While the novel is the weakest of the Brontë’s, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. [...]
While the antiquated and elevated language may be a barrier to some readers, a persistent bibliophile will quickly become accustomed to the style.  These three women have all left us a fantastic set of literary marvels.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë is an exhilarating ride through one of my favorite literary periods. 5 stars. (Jim McKeown)

The Guardian asked readers about 'which black and minority ethnic writers should be studied' and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea was among the suggestions:

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë depicts non-English sexuality as corrupt and threatening. But in Rhys’s version of the story, Bertha Mason is not an aggressor. She’s a victim who has to be doubly sacrificed, trapped then burned, so that Jane and Mr Rochester can have their happy ending.
Sibyl Ruth, former University of Cambridge student

An article on Angela Carter in The Nation reminds us of her description of Wuthering Heights.

Carter once called Wuthering Heights “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, love stories ever written,” and in her fiction the male romantic leads tend to be feral, violent, and encrusted with dirt. (Namara Smith)

Buffalo News reviews the book Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Beware of spoilers, though!

Plucky Anna gets hired at the Naval Yard, measuring microscopic navigational components to support her mother and disabled sister after her father disappears, conveniently leaving a bankbook and some cash on the dresser. She encounters a Heathcliff/Mr. Rochester-style, dark-haired gangster lover, first as a child visiting him with her father, years later under unsavory circumstances. Fear not, he has a heart of gold, as far as Anna is concerned. (Stephanie Shapiro)

The Globe and Mail features the film Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive, to be broadcast on PBS on Monday.

His mother, Eliza Poe, was a star of musical comedy when she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. She had three children and had just been abandoned by a feckless husband. Knowing she was dying, Eliza appealed to her friends and fans to help her kids, and Edgar was taken in by the Allan family. His stepmother adored him and his stepfather, a successful businessman, scorned the boy. What we get is a picture of Poe as a Victorian orphan – such as those in Brontë novels – who is forever traumatized by the need to find a home and hearth where they are welcome and comfortable. (John Doyle)

WPSU reviews the film God's Own Country.

Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) is strong, Heathcliff-handsome (if anything, the setting and the pent-up passions in God's Own Country owe more to Wuthering Heights than to Brokeback Mountain), and fiercely ready to set boundaries when Johnny dismisses him as a gypsy. (Ella Taylor)

Vox has an article on Lord Byron inspired by the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Jacques Barzun, writing in the Atlantic in the 1950s of Byron’s influence, gives a (truncated) rundown of the great writers influenced by that trope: “From Goethe, Pushkin, Stendhal, Heine, Balzac, Scott, Carlyle, Mazzini, Leopardi, Berlioz, George Sand, and Delacroix down to Flaubert, Tennyson, Ruskin, the Brontës, Baudelaire, Becque, Nietzsche, Wilde, and Strindberg, one can scarcely name a writer who did not come under the spell of Byronism and turn it to some use in his own life or work.” (Tara Isabella Burton)

Many Gendered Mothers discusses 'Charlotte Brontë’s Jane and Emily Brontë’s Catherine'.

Yesterday on Facebook, both The Brontë Parsonage Museum and The Brontë Society recalled the anniversary of the publication of Shirley in 1849.