In a nightgown

Richard Wilcocks reviews Emily Jane Brontë and her Music by John Hennessy on the Brontë Parsonage Blog. Rachel Sutcliffe shares her walk around Penzance including the Branwell family home.

Yvette Huddleston talks about the recent Emily bicentenary in The Yorkshire Post:

On a more uplifting note – the other significant anniversary was the bicentenary, on Monday this week, of the birth of Emily Brontë. The most mysterious of the literary siblings, there is very little known about Emily, much less than about Charlotte, Anne or even Branwell. In a way, that is a good thing – it means that her work is free to speak for itself, uncluttered by biographical detail. And there is such a thing as over-analysis. I can’t imagine Emily herself having much truck with that. Instead we have her brilliant, visceral and at times disturbing novel – not a romantic love story at all, as it is so often charaterised, but a clear-eyed observation of family dysfunction and destructive passion – and her exquisite, much-admired poetry. When it all gets too much, you’ll find me up on the ‘wily, windy moors’ with the spirit of Emily.

Saffron Muses has written a fascinating post with a description of her experiences at the recent celebrations.

The Daily Star discusses literature by women... for women?

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, while not autobiographical but as intensely personal, is an intimate portrait of two families living on the windswept Yorkshire moors and their tales of love and revenge across generations. The novel was called both “pagan” and “repellent” by critics at the time. Even today, readers and academics find it difficult to grasp that Heathcliff, the brooding, tortured, romantic anti-hero with his obsessive desire for Catherine Earnshaw, was written by a woman who had never herself taken a lover in her short life.
At the time Brontë was writing, it was difficult for a woman to be published, let alone taken seriously as a writer. In 1847, she published Wuthering Heights under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Unlike [Sylvia] Plath, whose life was subsequently under the spotlight because of her marriage to Ted Hughes and the many poems she turned out before she died, Emily Brontë was a complete mystery. Little is known of her beyond her one novel and her elder (and more famous) sister Charlotte's accounts of her. Despite this, Wuthering Heights remains a much-read, much-loved classic in the English-speaking world, inspiring songs and numerous TV and film adaptations.
While Wuthering Heights was deemed unusual for a woman writer having a well-written male protagonist, The Bell Jar on the other hand, which centered around a female protagonist, was largely dismissed by (male) critics as catering to a female readership alone. Plath's readers, too, have been marginalised. “If one is to believe the narrative told by literary and popular culture, Plath's primary audience is a body of young, misguided women who uncritically—even pathologically— consume Plath's writing with no awareness of how they harm the author's reputation in the process,” writes Janet Badia, an academic who explores this narrative in her 2011 novel, Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers.
Early writers such as Brontë had changed what was possible for a woman to write in those days, beyond what women until then had traditionally written. Today, while women writers are ubiquitous and no longer need to resort to using pseudonyms, many are still relegated to a niche female-only audience. (Maliha Khan)

 The Monadnock Daily-Transcript gives hints of an interesting new project:

Graphic novelist James Sturm will read selections of his own work, talk comics and graphic literature, and offer some context for the choice of Art Spiegelman as the 59th Edward MacDowell Medalist during a special edition of MacDowell Downtown on Friday, Aug. 3 at The Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough. (...)
Sturm has numerous creative projects in the works, including graphic novels about Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Tubman for publisher Hyperion Disney.  (Jonathan Gourlay)

The Guardian reviews the translation of Norah Lange's Personas en la sala:

In an interview in the 1960s, Lange revealed her inspiration for People in the Room: she took Bramwell (sic)  Brontë’s ghostly portrait of his three famous sisters and transposed it to Calle Tronador, the site of her mother’s soirees. Marta J Sierra suggests that the three women are stand-ins for the Martin Fierro group, who attended those literary meet-ups. Being one of the group’s two female members, Lange existed on its periphery and was, in the words of Patricia Nisbet Klingenberg, “someone they enjoyed but treated with fond condescension”. (James Reith)

Nylon asks writers about the book that inspired them to be writers:

Laura June, author of Now My Heart Is FullJane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre, more than any book I've ever read, made me both want to be a writer and it made me aware of a world where arts can be labored over, learned, and fetishized in a way which is creative and ultimately self-satisfying. Jane's world is populated from the first pages with books—she describes specific books, the pictures in them—with paper, and pens, with drawing materials, and, Jane's story for me, has always mostly been one of a young woman working ceaselessly to attain mastery. Mastery over herself and her work, and though I've read plenty of books since where narrative value is placed on self-reliance and hard work, the way that Charlotte Brontë deploys these basic values as specifically important to the creative lives of women was, for me, the match that lit the flame. (Kristin Iversen)

 The New York Times interviews the author Sophie Hannah:

Who’s your favorite fictional detective? And the best villain?
Hercule Poirot is the greatest detective, of course, closely followed by Agatha Christie’s other “main” sleuth, Miss Marple.
My favorite fictional villain would have to be Mr. Brocklehurst or Aunt Reed in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” or Hindley Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” I tend to feel sorry for almost all villains, but not those ones. I loathe them all and still want to give them a hard punch on the nose, decades after I first met them. 

Awesome Gang interviews another author, Iona Stuart:

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Hmm, what a question… I think I would definitely bring ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger, ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë, and probably a few books by Angela Carter.

Southwark News interviews Natasha Barnes, who will be Charlotte Brontë in the upcoming Wasted musical:

Sheridan Smith’s understudy at hit musical Funny Girl, Natasha Barnes, could not contain her excitement when she spoke to Southwark News.
“Southwark Playhouse is on my bucket list. It is such an exciting venue. It is always somewhere that I loved.
“I think whether you are a fan of musical, Brontës or rock it ticks a load of different boxes.”
Natasha has been cast as the role of Charlotte Brontë and it is a dream come true.
She said: “This is what I got into the business for and maybe somebody else will be doing their version of Charlotte Brontë in 20 years looking at my work.
“It is amazing, I have worked with different projects on the Brontës all of my life.”
The theatre and TV actress who has previously performed on ITV’s Doc Martin claims that for her acting is not about celebrity recognition.
Her love for the Brontës has been continuous and existed for many years before she did a radio play about them. (Danny Wiser)

Chestnut Hill Local interviews local writer and scholar Karen Bojar:

And I love the 19th century English novels I read as a teenager, especially Dickens and the Brontë’s (sic). I really need to read ‘Jane Eyre’ one more time before I check out.” (Len Lear)

The Wall Street Journal makes a case for wearing nightgowns all day:

As Jane Eyre in the 2011 adaptation, Mia Wasikowska runs away from Thornfield Hall's ghost in a dirty, white, ruffle-collared dressing gown. (Rebecca Malinksy)

The Charlotte Observer reviews a local production of the musical Lizzie:

Aesthetically it’s like Jane Eyre-meets-Hedwig. Period costumes give way to punk rock apparel and traditional musical elements like demonstrative theater vocals and meaningful refrains mingle with distorted guitars, psychedelic keys and a Janis Joplin-meets-the Runaways performance style with Shepherd in particular swinging her hair, prowling the stage and utilizing the rock star move playbook to its full extent. (Courtney Devores)

The Reviews Hub publishes a review of York performances of The Secret Garden:

Steven Roberts (Colin) gives another stand-out performance, moving towards liberation in a different way. As an invalid, his conversations with Mary are touchingly reminiscent of the dying Linton and Cathy in Wuthering Heights, though Colin, of course, is not dying. (Ron Simpson)

Financial Times talks about the rise of micro-libraries:

As I bid farewell to a handful of novels I won’t be rereading, I can’t help but be drawn in by the others on Arsenal’s shelves. Previous visits have yielded Pamela Druckerman’s parenting book French Children Don’t Throw Food and an irresistible striped-orange Penguin classic edition of Wuthering Heights. (Emily Rhodes)

Barnes and Noble Teen blog recommends:

Wrong in All the Right Ways, by Tiffany Brownlee
Wuthering Heights gets an update and makeover in this addictive debut about a forbidden attraction between a high-achieving AP student and her new foster brother, a moody bad boy. Emma discovers parallels between her tumultuous romance with Dylan and that of doomed lovers Katherine and Heathcliff, while writing about the classic book for English Lit. But if her parents discover what’s going on between the two teens, Dylan could become ineligible for adoption. (Sarah Skilton)

der Standard (Austria) asks their readers about their favourite Brontë novel:

Die Brontë-Schwestern: Ihre liebsten Romane?
"Wuthering Heights", "Jane Eyre" oder "Die Herrin von Wildfell Hall" – welches Brontë-Werk hat Sie besonders beeindruckt?
Vor 200 Jahren wurde Emily Brontë geboren – sie und ihre Schwestern Anne und Charlotte bildeten ein bis heute von vielen verehrtes Autorinnentrio. In der Abgeschiedenheit des englischen Hochmoors entstanden im Dörfchen Haworth einige Klassiker der Weltliteratur, die die drei Pfarrerstöchter zeit ihres Lebens unter den männlichen Pseudonymen Ellis, Currer und Acton Bell veröffentlichten. (Translation)

El Punt Avui (in Catalan) continues reading (slowly) Wuthering Heights;  Planeta Donna (Italy) lists 'sexy quotes for men' including one of Wuthering Heights; Jennifer C. Wilson reviews Sue Barnard's Heathcliff.