The shared experience of writing

San Francisco Gate reviews A Secret Sisterhood by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney:

“A cottage-dwelling spinster; an impassioned roamer of the moors; a fallen woman, shunned; a melancholic genius” — these perceptions of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, respectively, are beguilingly questioned in “A Secret Sisterhood.” The closest the four came to knowing each other was, apparently, when Eliot’s friend Harriet Beecher Stowe contacted Brontë through a spirit medium. But in four separate narratives, Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney explore each writer’s relationship with a writing friend. (...)
Brontë’s friendship with Mary Taylor began at school and, after Taylor emigrated to New Zealand, continued by unreliable seaborne post. The images in this section are among the book’s most moving: Taylor, after reading “Jane Eyre,” stands on a New Zealand hill in hopes of spotting a suitable ship to carry her thoughts about her friend’s novel — “so perfect as a work of art,” yet lacking in moral or political purpose — back to its author. Brontë receives the letter five months later as, in short order, her father and sisters die. Through a friendship anchored in schoolgirl confidences and the shared experience of writing, Brontë and Taylor provided each other support, honest critique and a spirited rivalry that drove each to her best. (Meg Waite Clayton)

Philip Hensher shares a new year's eve tale in The Sunday Times:

In the meantime, we played that interesting game Ex Libris, in which the blurb of a book is read out and players anonymously write what they think that book’s first line is. In my experience, this is only fun if someone solemnly reads out the blurb of Jane Eyre and a competitor solemnly writes: “Jane Eyre was nearly 16 years old before she made her first million selling AK-47s to Pablo Escobar’s cocaine whores.” It is no fun if people spend 10 minutes sucking their pens and trying to remember what Jane Eyre’s first line actually is. (Something about a walk in the rain.)

The Yorkshire Post talks about the recent 24th Auld Lang Syne fell race at Penistone Hill Country Park:

The event attracts both elite runners and those taking part in fancy dress meaning the field included the Olympian but also competitors in tutus and others dressed as the Brontë sisters and Christmas characters. In keeping with the spirit of fun there was Daleside beer for all finishers.

The Herald (Zimbabwe) has some reading challenge for 2018:

A classic
A throwback to literature in English during high school, this category can be completed by going through anything by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Harper Lee, Leo Tolstoy and many others. If one has read very little Russian literature so, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina might be on the list this year. (Chris Charamba)

El Exprés (México) shares the challenge:

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (Alianza)
Otro gran clásico de la literatura con una nueva traducción. Alianza ha hecho un gran trabajo de varios años para acá reeditando clásicos y haciéndolos sumamente accesible.
Jane Eyre es la historia de Jane, una huérfana desposeída que se convierte en institutriz en una gran casa en la campiña inglesa. Es una historia de amor, pero sobre todo es un relato sobre una mujer que toma ella misma las decisiones sobre su bien. (Translation)

Patheos has a Christian reading of Jane Eyre's choices:

Romantic love is a great sweetness, but is not the “point” of marriage or necessary to marriage. Nobody should marry against his or her will, but a good marriage can begin in a love that is not romantic. Marriage must begin in love, but obviously not all loves are romantic! As Jane Eyre discovered in the greatest of English novels Jane Eyre, liberty comes from finding family, even in singleness, and turning one’s back on romantic love to obey the laws of God is hard, but good. (John Mark N. Reynolds)

El Mundo (Spain) discusses Anthony Trollope:

El rastro refulgente de la novela victoriana fue, claro, Charles Dickens, pero la literatura inglesa del XIX, marcada, como tantas otras, por el realismo, tuvo figuras de no menos relevancia. Las hermanas Charlotte y Emily Brontë, junto a William M. Tackeray, George Eliot y Wilkie Collins -todos ellos (y ella, por si acaso, la Eliot) nacidos entre 1811 y 1824- extendieron su magisterio hasta los años 70, al igual que Anthony Trollope, amigo de los tres últimos. Las Brontë murieron mucho antes. (Manuel Hidalgo) (Translation)

Benzine Magazine (France) chooses the best films of the year. Including Lady Macbeth:

The young lady emprunte à Shakespeare, Brontë et Flaubert dans ce récit d’amour interdit, de manipulation, de meurtre, de différence de classe et de lande tout autour. William Oldroy en magnifie la noirceur et le tragique, et révèle au passage l’étonnante Florence Pugh.  (Translation)

RTÉ (Ireland) makes the same choice:

We called it "a date movie with a difference". Making Wuthering Heights resemble a Famous Five adventure where everyone ended up scoffing creamed scones and having a jolly good time, Lady Macbeth was a delightfully seditious period drama that handed patriarchy a right good kicking.

AnneBrontë.org extrapolates 2018 wishes/resolutions for the Brontë sisters and brother. Northern Reading reviews Take Courage. Anne Brontë and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis.