The reopening (next February 1) of the Brontë Parsonage is reported in
Keighley News:
Staff at the Haworth museum are organising a host of events throughout the year celebrating the 200th anniversary of Emily’s birth in 1818.
There will be activities for all ages either at the museum or in nearby venues like the Old School Rooms and West Lane Baptist Centre.
The packed programme follows similar, hugely-successful years commemorating the 200th birthdays of Emily’s siblings Charlotte and Branwell in 2016 and 2017.
The Brontë Society, which runs the museum, also plans to mark Anne Brontë’s bicentenary and the life of Patrick Brontë as its five-year Brontë200 festival continues into 2020.
The society was so excited about 2018 being ‘Emily’s Year’ that it invited several notable creative people to lead projects, highlighting various aspects of the enigmatic writer’s personality, life and work. (...)
Kitty Wright, executive director of the Brontë Society, said she was thrilled to present the programme for the first half of 2018, calling Emily a respected poet and writer of one of the world’s best-loved novels.
She said: “We have lined up an exciting and varied programme of new commissions, exhibitions, talks, exclusive Parsonage Unwrapped evenings and other special events.”
Kitty highlighted the creation of a new manuscript for Wuthering Heights, to replace Emily’s lost original, which was handwritten line-by-line by Brontë Parsonage Museum visitors last year, in a project led by artist Clare Twomey.
Kitty said: “This was a project that captured the hearts and imaginations of many, and we’re pleased to have a finished manuscript on display during 2018.
“We are also very proud to have Branwell’s original ‘pillar portrait’ of the Brontë sisters, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery – a perfect addition to our celebrations.” (Jim Seton)
The Telegraph & Argus presents the performances of
Jane Hair in Thornton:
Today the performance will come to the birthplace of the Brontës, Thornton, where Jane Hair will be held at De Luca Hair Boutique in a sold-out show.
It has already been performed in the teaching salon at Keighley College, and on Friday there were two performances at the salon in Bradford College’s David Hockney Building, with the audience sitting in salon chairs and some invited up to have their hair styled by the sisters.
The play has been created by actor Kat Rose Martin, from Bierley, who also plays Emily, and writer Kirsty Smith, who grew up in Haworth and now lives in Ilkley, as a way of bringing the work of the sisters to the attention of more young people.
The title was inspired by the name of a hair salon in Crossflatts.
Jane Hair transforms Emily into a poet who posts her “poetry slams” online, Charlotte into a playwright and “the other one”, Anne, into a blogger. They work in the salon with their brother Branwell, a frustrated painter and gambling addict, but dream of making a living from their writing.
Miss Smith said previous events she had been to that discussed the Brontes had been fairly dry, and this was an effort to make the family more relevant to modern, and younger, audiences. She said: “The idea is to get more younger people involved in the Brontës’ work.
“I thought there wasn’t a great deal of ownership of them locally. People all over the world have this ownership of them, but we wanted more people in Bradford to know more about the amazing story of these sisters who achieved something absolutely massive.”
Miss Rose Martin said: “I wasn’t taught about the Brontës in school and I live in Bradford. How do we not know about the story of how these women got such amazing success? We thought ‘let’s make something relatable’ and not just look at them as people from a stuffy old picture from 200 years ago.
“We’re trying to show them as real people and accept them with all their human flaws.
“We hope this play brings out people who might not have been to the theatre before.”
They said working in the salon acted as a stand-in for the sisters’ home lives and their jobs – although famous as writers, they also had to work hard to make a living. (Chris Young)
Kaya Scodelario is portrayed in
The Times:
The 25-year-old has sprung from Holloway to Hollywood via a combination of talent (she matched Johnny Depp quip for quip in the last Pirates of the Caribbean film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, and played a raw, intense Cathy in Andrea Arnold’s very modern take on Wuthering Heights) and honesty (she admitted that she hadn’t read Emily Brontë’s novel before that film). (Ed Potton)
Also in
The Times, a review of
Milkshakes and Morphine: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Genevieve Fox:
They are shuttled through empty wings of stately homes owned by elderly viscountesses, until someone comes up with a plan to send the Fox orphans to boarding school and have them cared for during the holidays by a governess figure in a rented house. Three months after their mother’s death an advertisement for a governess is placed in The Lady, under the headline “Three Recently Orphaned Children”, like a scene from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Fox, then and now, is just as appalled as the reader. “A bit too Jane Eyre,” she remarks acerbically at one point, but is powerless to avoid the shame of being unwanted. She meets another orphan and is astonished to hear her talking about this status openly, “as if it were a fact and no reflection on her”. (Helen Rumbelow)
Seasonal reading in
Vogue:
Once, in my late teens, I made the mistake of slogging through a hot beach holiday in Greece reading Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, a long, dour tale that, as I remember, had numerous scenes of overcast skies and windswept Belgian landscapes to accompany its plotline of gloom and heartache. No diss to Brontë, but I resolved there and then to think carefully about the fictional world I immerse myself in vis-à-vis where I am in the real world. (Eve MacSweeney)
Leicester Mercury interviews a local lawyer:
It’s very difficult for me to pick one author as I love to read (particularly the classics) and have, as with many things, a totally eclectic taste. It would be a close fight between the Brontë sisters (Charlotte and Emily) and Jane Austen, I think.
I suppose I would have to say my favourite book is either Pride & Prejudice or Jane Eyre.
The former features an exceptional use of satire in its social commentary on virtue and women in society, and I do enjoy the underlying love story between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy.
Jane Eyre is equally a strong and enduring love story, albeit the story is much darker and more serious in its themes. I should probably also mention Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, since I’ve read it at least half a dozen times – you get totally drawn into the culture and setting described by Golden. (Tom Pegden)
The Australian reviews some recent group biographies, including
Beyond Australia, Lyndall Gordon’s new book about Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf (Outsiders: Five Women Who Changed the World) suggests that the writing of those women was nourished by looking at society from the outside. (Jill Burton)
The writer JC Harroway in
Female First:
Like many of us cutting our romance teeth, I progressed from the classics by Bronte, Austen and Alcott and eventually swiped one or two of those devoured Mills and Boon romances from my Nan's stash. And so began my current obsession with romance. An obsession now blossomed into a full-blown addiction.
Wrong sister alarm:
PSU Collegio reviews the first album by The Cranberries and gets mixed in its references:
Multiple times throughout this record, like “Pretty,” “Not Sorry” or “Still Wanted…” I think of Charlotte Brontë’s perfect novel, Wuthering Heights, and it’s bleak, grey tone and get the same feeling from these songs as I do from that book. (Thad White Music Junkie)
BCS Noticias (México) has a story mixing crystal meth and
Jane Eyre:
Trabajando en el sitio, se localizó una caja de cartón, color blanco, que en su interior contenía un libro azul con la leyenda “Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)”, procediendo con la revisión de este se encontró que varias de sus páginas habían sido recortadas, simulando un hueco al centro del libro.
Al interior del libro se encontraba un envoltorio de forma irregular, confeccionado en plástico transparente, el cual contiene en su interior una sustancia sólida y cristalina conocida como cristal, informó PGR en un comunicado, sin detallar la cantidad de sustancia decomisada. (Translation)
Le Devoir (Canada) interviews Fanny Britt on her upcoming play
Hurlevents:
Vengeance, possession et amour absolu sont au centre de «Hurlevents», une pièce habitée par les ambitions littéraires des sœurs Brontë.
Si bien que, lorsque le directeur du théâtre Denise-Pelletier, Claude Poissant, lui a suggéré d’écrire à partir d’un personnage féminin marquant, elle a illico songé à Charlotte Brontë, dont le Jane Eyre fut le modèle de sa jeunesse (lui ayant d’ailleurs inspiré un roman graphique à succès, Jane, le renard et moi), et à Emily Brontë, l’auteure des Hauts de Hurlevent. Inspirations de départ de ce qui fut un long processus de création, aux méandres tortueux. « J’ai écrit une pièce complète, 75 pages, et il en est resté un paragraphe ! »
La dramaturge a dû se libérer de son admiration envers ses idoles pour écrire, ultimement, une pièce originale, contemporaine. Hurlevents est toutefois habitée par les ambitions littéraires des deux écrivaines victoriennes et par les archétypes hantant le récit de passion destructrice composé par Emily en 1846. « Finalement, ça donne une oeuvre qui veut poser des questions semblables sur la vengeance, la possession, l’amour absolu comme forme suprême de sentiment humain. Et sur l’absence de pouvoir des femmes. » (Marie Labrecque) (Translation)
Tips (Austria) interviews Markus Olzinger, director of the upcoming production of the Gordon & Caird
Jane Eyre musical in Gmunden, Germany:
Tips: Mit Jane Eyre steht ein Broadway-Meisterwerk heuer auf dem Programm, die Erwartungen werden bestimmt nicht gering sein. Wie geht man damit um? (Valerie Himmelbauer)
Olzinger: Natürlich schauen jetzt viele nach Gmunden und beobachten, was wir hier machen, aber mich kümmert das ehrlich gesagt gar nicht. Gmunden ist für mich eine Spielwiese, wo ich Theater ganz nach meinen Vorstellungen machen kann. Ich orientiere mich auch nicht an sogenannten Trends. (Translation)
El Cultural (Spain) reviews the TV series
SMILF:
Series como SMILF ayudan a revolucionar el panorama (y no solo el audiovisual). La introducción de nuevos referentes obliga a repensar cómo y quién nos ha contado la historia hasta ahora. En la serie de Frankie Shaw la referencia mitológica es Medea, la literaria Charlotte Brontë (concretamente Jane Eyre), la deportiva Jennifer Azzi (ex jugadora de baloncesto), la seriéfila Scandal y la cinematográfica Corre, Lola, Corre, la película de Tom Twyker protagonizada por Franka Potente a la que se alude explícitamente en el quinto capítulo (también hay un guiño entre irónico y paródico a Thelma & Louise). (Enric Albero) (Translation)
Letralia (in Spanish) is tired of reading about the
Rebecca-Jane Eyre similarities:
Una novela de tanto éxito, me estoy refiriendo a Rebecca, tuvo sin embargo sus detractores, ya que apenas triunfar, se la acusó de ser un plagio de Jane Eyre, plagio que yo nunca he encontrado por ninguna parte, lo cual indica que a la gente le gusta mucho criticar. Veamos si no. En primer lugar, el hecho de que el señor Rochester estuviera casado, aunque en su caso lo ocultara, no le identifica con Max de Winter, ni Jane Eyre, personaje, puede ser la reencarnación de la joven esposa del señor de Winter. Que Manderley arda al final no es una copia de que la casa de Rochester sea también pasto de las llamas, ahí concluyen todas las hipotéticas similitudes, y a tener en cuenta un detalle muy importante: la señora Danvers, la mítica ama de llaves de Manderley, no sale por ningún lado en Jane Eyre. ¿A qué obstinarse entonces en inventar parecidos argumentales? (Estrella Cardona Gamio) (Translation)
Milenio (México) reviews
La sangre de los libros by Santiago Posteguillo.
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