Dangerous, Unpredictable Emily

Hila Sachar, author of Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature

Wuthering Heights and Company, writes an article in The Conversation about how Emily Brontë and her novel have been romanticised:

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) tends to attract different kinds of film and TV adaptations to the usual polite drawing-room dramas. This is partly because Wuthering Heights is a brutal novel, despite all the romance associated with it. But it’s also down to how Brontë is remembered as an author. In this, her bicentenary year, her enduring appeal as a romanticised figure is much discussed. (...)
Emily as a mystical medium is the ultimate visual symbol of how authors are commonly conjured up – as divine geniuses, inspired from above. Of course this is far more attractive than showing the blood, sweat and tears that come with the real craft of writing. But there is something more going on here – something which is representative of wider cultural politics and what often happens with authors like Emily Brontë: they are turned into easily consumable, harmless, generic figures. (...)
The question is, in 2018, should adaptations continue to collude in the screen legacy of a “safe” Emily Brontë, viewed from a transcending distance, or could they consider a more dangerous, unpredictable Emily who compels the reader to examine forms of power and powerlessness in contemporary times? It’s time to shed the romance for the reality.

The visit of Michael Ellis MP (the current Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) to the Brontë Parsonage Museum is on Keighley News:

The Arts Minister was able to see a national treasure when he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Michael Ellis studied the Pillar Portrait, Branwell Brontë’s famous painting of his sisters, when he toured the Haworth museum last week.
Mr Ellis, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, spent a day in West Yorkshire visiting various attractions including the Eureka! children’s museum in Halifax. (...)
[Kitty Wright, Executive Director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum]  said: “It is a place which very much exemplifies all three aspects of his portfolio of arts, heritage and tourism.
“We were particularly proud to show him the iconic Pillar Portrait, painted by Branwell Brontë and currently on loan from the National Portrait Gallery.
“Our location in Haworth, in the house where the Brontë sisters’ extraordinary novels were written, on the edge of the moors that so informed their work, is immensely important to us and central to the Brontës’ story.
“It is therefore quite fitting that the Minister was able to see the painting, the only known surviving portrait that shows all three sisters together, while it is spending the summer with us here, in the place it was painted, as part of our Brontë 200 celebrations.” (David Knights)

What's on Stage publishes some pictures of the rehearsal of the upcoming musical Wasted:

Directed by Adam Lenson, who returns to the venue following his sell-out success with The Rink, Wasted has music by Christopher Ash and book and lyrics by Carl Miller. The show is a rock documentary charting the lives of the three Brontë sisters and their brother as they grow up in a poverty-stricken town beset by illness.
The production has set and costume design by Libby Todd with musical direction by Joe Bunker and movement direction by Natasha Harrison. (Alex Wood)

A walk between Ingrow and Oxenhope, parallel to the KVWR steam train line in The Lancashire Post:

This attraction – full name Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is a little gem offering families a slice of living history from the golden era of steam locomotives when engines had character. Throughout the year the Worth Valley Railway provides a service between Oxenhope and Keighley along a five mile route taking you along a fascinating valley rich in heritage not least being the village of Haworth famed for the Brontë sisters. (...)
The church must contain the saddest corner in Yorkshire with its memorial to the Brontë family. The Rev. Patrick Brontë survived his wife and his six children including world famous novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne before his death in 1861. What a lonely place the Parsonage must have seemed in his latter years. Returning to the walk head downhill on Main Street branching left for the station at Butt Lane which crosses Rawdon Road before continuing to the footbridge over the railway. (Bob Clare)

A Leading Article in The Times on family holidays and school:

The image of the forbidding Victorian headmaster is immortalised in literature. Mr Brocklehurst in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Dr Skinner in Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh had counterparts in real life, which are exemplified in an exchange of letters in 1883 between William Gladstone and the Rev Herbert William Sneyd- Kynnersley, headmaster of St George’s School in Ascot.

In the 25th anniversary of the film The Piano, her director, Jane Campion, reminisces in Empire Magazine, as quoted in The Stuff:

Recently revisiting her 1993 Palme d'Or-winning movie, The Piano director Jane Campion had admitted she was "shocked to see a film I barely remembered".
Speaking to Britain's Empire magazine to celebrate the New Zealand-shot movie's 25th anniversary, the Kiwi film-maker said it still had "some surprising strengths and freshness". (...)
Asked about the genesis of her 1850s-set story about the love triangle between a mute woman, her wealthy landowning husband and a plantation worker, Campion said it was inspired by her obsession with the works of George Eliot and the Brontë sisters. (James Croot)

Tri-City News recommends some fantasy books for the summer:

Many of us read Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre and had a lot of questions. Namely, why on Earth would Jane stay in musty old Thornfield Hall? Isn’t Rochester way too old for her? Doesn’t she notice that he is bad boyfriend material — stringing along poor Blanche, then making fun of her at a dinner party full of strangers? Why aren’t there more ghosts? Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadow and
Brodi Ashton’s uproarious supernatural young-adult retelling of the classic book, My Plain Jane, answers all those questions and more. (Corene Maret Brown)

Audiobooks read by celebrities on Bustle:

Jane Eyre. Read by Thandie Newton
Thandie Newton narrates this timeless classic, which tells the rich story of Jane, orphaned at a young age and now arriving at Thornfield Hall, where the brooding Edward Rochester has hired her to care for his ward Adèle. But things take a major turn when Jane falls hard for Mr. Rochester. If you've been meaning to give Jane Eyre a read, listening to this audiobook is the perfect way to do it! (Melissa Ragsdale)

Bust discusses the legendary Gytrash:

According to Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, a Gytrash is a goblin or spirit which takes the form of a horse, mule, or large dog. Typically found in the North of England, the Gytrash “haunted solitary ways” and often surprised unwary travelers as they journeyed alone in the dusk. Jane Eyre herself encounters what she believes to be a Gytrash one bleak, January evening as she is walking from Thornfield Hall to post a letter in the nearby village of Hay. (...)
Oddly, Oxford’s earliest example of the term is Brontë’s own Jane Eyre. However, looking back even further, I found a brief mention of a Gytrash in William Holloway’s 1839 A General Dictionary of Provincialisms. Holloway describes the Gytrash as: "An evil spirit; a ghost.” (Mimi Mathews)

TES on the Progress 8 system:

Continuously we were told that Progress 8 was only one of several measures used to judge schools and that it was the fairest measure there was. We were asked repeatedly, "What would you replace it with?" We replied "Contextual Value Added", which is the Jane Eyre of measures – lock it up in the attic and hope no one remembers its brilliance. What we knew, from first-hand and anecdotal evidence, was that the party line on Progress 8 wasn’t true – the measure was dictating inspection outcomes and this was obviously devastating news for schools where Progress 8 was likely to be the scythe for the grim reaper of accountability. (James Eldon)

Rochdale Online and South Pennines:

The South Pennines embraces parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester – a land of steep-sided valleys, heather moorland, distinctive market towns, canals, rivers and reservoirs. Often described as ‘spectacular’, ‘breathtaking’ and ‘dramatic’ it has inspired artists and writers over the centuries, from the Brontës to Angela Smyth.

ActuaLitté (in French) reviews The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne du Maurier:

Il ne s’agit pas d’une fiction, mais d’une biographie, écrite comme un roman, sur un ensablé lui aussi, un « raté ensablé anglais » plus exactement, Branwell Brontë, frère oublié des trois sœurs Brontë, Charlotte, Emily et Anne, fameux auteurs de Jane Eyre, Les Hauts-de-Hurlevent et La locataire de Wildfell Hall.
Branwell Brontë a laissé derrière lui une œuvre immense, des débuts de romans, des chroniques, des récits et des centaines de poèmes, jamais publiés. Pour une fois, intéressons-nous donc à un pan d’histoire littéraire anglaise, et non française. Après tout, nous sommes bientôt en vacances, et ce livre comblera ceux qui aiment les landes anglaises et les destins tragiques. (Les Ensablés)

Watson (Switzerland) proposes a new female canon, which includes Emily Brontë. DNA Literário (Brazil) vlogs about Jane Eyre (book and film). Bookish Byron reviews Alison Case's Nelly Dean. The Eyre Guide discusses the changes and evolution of Moira Buffini's Jane Eyre 2011 screenplay.