'The only consolation we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read'

The New York Times wonders, 'In Literature, Who Decides When Homage Becomes Theft?'

In January, the critic and novelist Francine Prose took to Facebook to express her outrage at a short story in the latest issue of The New Yorker by a relatively unknown writer named Sadia Shepard. Second-guessing The New Yorker’s fiction department is something of a parlor game among members of the literati, but Prose wasn’t interested in quibbling over aesthetics. To her, the story, titled “Foreign-Returned,” about Pakistani expatriates adrift in Stamford, Conn., was a flagrant rip-off of Mavis Gallant’s “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street,” about Canadian expatriates adrift in Geneva, Switzerland, and also published in The New Yorker, in 1963. “It’s just wrong,” Prose declared, setting off a skirmish on social media that rallied other acclaimed writers, including Alexander Chee, Jess Row, Gina Apostol and Salman Rushdie, to Shepard’s defense. [...]
Gallant's story is great. And Shepard’s story, whether readers consider it the equal of its inspiration or not, is worth hearing. It brings her into a literary conversation that has not traditionally put people like her at the fore. In this, too, she is following others’ lead, like the Welsh-Creole writer Jean Rhys, who placed Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” (1847), at the heart of “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966) (Ligaya Mishan)

While The Times tackles bad reviews, particularly when time proved them wrong.

Sometimes the widespread appreciation of a great artist’s achievement requires not just a passage of years but a shift in social mores. The independent heroines of Charlotte Brontë’s novels scandalised some contemporaries. One reviewer complained that Jane Eyre was a “crude and morbid story” and that “the only consolation we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read”.

Cheshire Live features young poet and Brontëite Ide Crawford, 12.

A youngster has been dubbed Macclesfield’s answer to Emily Brontë after being selected as the poet Laureate for St Pancras Station.
Ide Crawford, 12, was named winner of the Betjeman Poetry Prize for her verse ‘The Moors’ - inspired by the countryside around her hometown.
Her prize is to become the station’s official poet for the year, which means she will write three poems about it and perform them there.
And Ide was doubly thrilled as judges compared her to the Wuthering Heights author, who has always been her idol.
She said: “I was absolutely delighted, the best moment was when they said about Emily Brontë as she is my favourite author. Wuthering Heights is very focused on the moors.
“I have a few vague ideas about what I will write, I like the theme that train stations are places that you use to come and go to other places.” (Alex Scapens)

Her beautiful poem can be read and listened to here.

Women Writers, Women's Books has writer Milree Latimer tell about how she writes historical fiction.

My writing coach Jaclyn suggested I read ‘Jane Eyre’ again as I excavated the life of a governess in 1891.

Berliner Morgenpost features the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

Emily Brontë hatte recht. Es ist stürmisch auf den moosgrünen Hügeln rund um Haworth. Jenes Dorf in den Mooren von Yorkshire, in dem drei der bemerkenswertesten Autorinnen des 19. Jahrhunderts, Charlotte, Emily und Anne Brontë, lebten. Nur ein paar Heidesträucher sprenkeln das kahle, wellige Land mit lila Farbtupfern.
Mitten in dieser Moorlandschaft, ließ sich Emily zu ihrem Roman „Wuthering Heights“ („Sturmhöhe“) inspirieren. Geboren wurden die drei Schwestern zwischen 1816 und 1820 im nahen Thornton. Kurz darauf nahm Vater Patrick eine Pfarrstelle im armen, schmutzigen Weberdorf Haworth an.
Das geräumige Pfarrhaus aus gelbgrauen Ziegeln neben Kirche und Friedhof ist heute das „Brontë Personage [sic] Museum“. Möbel, Kleidungsstücke, Manuskripte, Briefe und Zeichnungen der Familie sind hier zu sehen. Am ovalen Esstisch entstanden zunächst Gedichte und später Romane wie „Jane Eyre“, „Sturmhöhe“ und „Agnes Grey“. Vom Esszimmer blickt man in den Garten und zum Friedhof. Begraben sind die Brontës dort nicht, sondern bis auf die jüngste Tochter Anne ruht die Familie in einer Gruft unter der Kirche St. Michael and all Angles.
Im Schreibwarengeschäft schräg gegenüber kauften die Schwestern ihr Papier, auf dem sie ihre Romane verfassten. Da Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert noch nichts zu melden hatten, veröffentlichten sie sie 1847 unter den männlichen Pseudonymen Currer, Ellis und Acton Bell. Heute vermarktet sich die Region als „Brontë Country“.
Schlendert man die mit Kopfsteinen gepflasterte Straße zwischen den Häusern mit den leicht verwitterten Sandsteinfassaden weiter bergab, gelangt man zum pittoresken Bahnhof von Haworth. Als die Brontës hier lebten, fuhr man noch mit Pferd und Wagen oder ging zu Fuß. Eine Bahnverbindung gab es nicht. Das monierte Bauingenieur John McLands­borough, als er 1861 den Ort besuchte. (Dagmar Krappe) (Translation)

The Independent finds it hilarious that an American 'inept subtitler' spelt Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, and home to the new Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker, as 'Hoodezfield' and takes the chance to convince its readers of the fact that, 'Hoodezfield is the best town in England'.

As a kid growing up in Huddersfield, I was convinced my hometown embodied the sentiment of “it’s grim up north”. Now, I find my eyeline forever drifting upwards, in the direction of those Wuthering Heights-hills. Even when it’s grey and overcast, the emerald greens and bracken browns stay beautiful and true, the blackened stone of the houses harking back to Huddersfield’s industrial past. Even if it does piss it down 154 days out of the year, it’s far from grim. [...]
Huddersfield also lies within West Yorkshire, England’s most overachieving county, the undisputed best of the Yorkshires. It’s a county that produced the Brontë sisters, Helen Fielding, Alan Bennett and more Olympic gold medallists than you can shake a stick at. (Lauren Cocking)

Finally, a German edition of Jane Eyre on Jane Eyre's Library (in Spanish).