Bookshelves and poems

Gulf News discusses poetry and particularly an 1837 Emily Brontë poem:

Another poem that has stayed with me is the one I discovered while reading Emily Bronte, who is best-known for her dark and brooding novel, Wuthering Heights, which is set in the Yorkshire Moors. I was struck by one of her poems that was printed in the copy of the book, a familiar lament over countryside that is beautiful and yet terrible.

‘Redbreast, early in the morning
Dank and cold and cloudy grey,
Wildly tender is thy music
Chasing angry thoughts away.’

But Emily’s tone changes towards the end of the poem and she brings a deep sorrow to the writing.

‘I heard it then, you heard it too,
And seraph sweet it sang to you;
But like a shriek of misery,
That wild, wild music wailed to me.’

These are the words that have stayed with me and I’ve often wondered why; they speak of the feeling of being trapped in a world that is perhaps not of your making and which doesn’t seem to fit with an ideal. But there also exists beauty and we can all relate to Emily’s conflicting feelings. (Christina Curran)

The writer Julie Parsons talks about her bookshelves in The Irish Times:

I stand in front of my book shelves. There are books here which I’ve had since I was a child. Packed up and shipped in an old tin trunk all the way from New Zealand 54 years ago. Their covers are tattered, worn and faded. There is a row of tall green hard backs, their spines decorated with gold leaf which spells out The Novels of the Sisters Brontë, passed down from my grandmother Elsie Purefoy to my mother, Elizabeth Chamberlain, and thence to me.

Shelf portraits, as a matter of fact, are a thing. And artist Roo Waterhouse is a good example, as seen in Yorkshire Post:

Her How to Build a Girl print, which takes its title from the semi-autobiography by Caitlin Moran, tells the story and also features Jane Eyre, Cold Comfort Farm, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. (Sharon Dale)

The initiative of putting a Wuthering Heights in your pillow for your hotel stay is more extended than we thought. The Times reports:

Brontë Booking club
To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Emily Brontë, an English hotel brand is offering A Novel Escape — a stay in a range of English properties — with dinner, breakfast and a copy of Wuthering Heights. It must be booked this month for stays between January 8 and March 29, and starts at £149 (€168) per night. handpickedhotels.co.uk (Dara Flynn)

The Richmond Register talks about reading challenges:

I am so intrigued by this idea of reading from different time periods that I got to thinking about what my favorite reading eras were. I guess the 19th century is probably my favorite century. With authors such as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, the Brontës, Louisa May Alcott, William Wordsworth, and Emily Dickinson, in my opinion, it’s hard to go wrong.

A new romance collection is published in Argentina. Clarín explains:

De una generación diferente a las de [Barbara] Steel y [Nora] Roberts, Kate Morton es otra de las referentes mundiales del género. Nació en Australia, vive en Londres y, según admitió en entrevistas periodísticas, sus fuentes literarias nacen de sus lecturas juveniles que incluian a Dickens y a las hermanas Brontë. (Translation)

Diario Sur (Spain) is an example of how to report something that is basically wrong:

Jane Austen escondía sus escritos en un libro cuando alguien entraba en la habitación, Charlotte Brontë detenía la escritura para ponerse a pelar patatas y George Eliot fue acusada de «ordinariez e inmoralidad» en su intento de «familiarizar el pensamiento de las mujeres jóvenes de rangos medios y altos con asuntos sobre los que sus padres y hermanos nunca se hubieran atrevido a hablar en su presencia». (Antonio Javier López) (Translation)

Jennifer Selway's column in the Daily Express also comments briefly on the Lily Cole affair, mainly to criticise the objections to her choosing as creative consultant. The Diary of a Book Geek posts about Jane Eyre. Les Soeurs Brontë (in French) summarizes some of the Emily Brontë 200th anniversary events. Eric Ruijssenaars posts on the Brussels Brontë Blog about one particularly curious Argentinian edition of Villette (misattributed to Emily Bronté!).