Literature is very much the business of her life

The New York Times reviews Glynnis Fawkes's graphic novel Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre:

Glynnis Fawkes’s graphic biography of Charlotte Brontë opens with the 20-year-old aspiring writer receiving a letter from the poet Robert Southey. He warns her, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.” Find yourself a husband, he says; write poems on the side if you must. But creative aspirations? Forget about it. (...)
Fawkes’s textured retelling of one such story, Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre (Disney/Hyperion, 92 pp., $17, ages 10 and up), traces the writer’s life from her girlhood on the moors of England to the age of 31, when she submitted the manuscript for her first novel to its publisher.
This emotionally nuanced and visually stunning biography, illustrated in deft pencil strokes colored with moody shades of blue and featuring an insightful introduction written by Alison Bechdel, is the latest venture from the Center for Cartoon Stories, whose recent subjects include Satchel Paige and Henry David Thoreau. From the moment we meet 5-year-old Charlotte, we see that literature is very much the business of her life (not to mention that of the other Brontë siblings). (Read more) (Jennifer Harlan)

Also in the New York Times a selection of audiobooks classics read by women:

One time I listened to Maggie Gyllenhaal read “Anna Karenina” for 35 hours! I say this to make the actor Thandie Newton’s 19-hour recording of Jane Eyre (Audible Studios; 19 hours, 10 minutes), by Charlotte Brontë, sound more manageable. “Reader,” extended beat. “I married him,” Newton says, as swiftly as a sigh, perfectly capturing the inevitability of the conclusion. Her taut British diction makes a one-woman play out of the orphan girl’s love story, which starts out with all the young-adult tropes — the poor, good-hearted child abused by the spoiled, wealthy boy and his classist keepers, each distinguished by his or her own idiosyncratic cadence — but progresses into what many consider the prototypical Victorian novel. Written in 1847, not long before the start of the American Civil War, the novel makes repeated comparisons between Jane’s captivity, as an impoverished girl in a rich family’s home, and slavery. Newton’s exasperated and aptly melodramatic delivery of Jane’s accusation that her cruel stepbrother is “like a slave-driver” is a knowing contemporary wink at this timeless yet dated classic. (Lauren Christensen)

Basement Medicine reviews the recent performances of Polly Teale's Brontë in Johnson, CT:

“Brontë” follows the fictionalized lives of the real-life Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne and their creative minds that drive them to write even though society tells them otherwise. The play also follows the story of their brother Branwell and their father, Patrick. (...)
The show began with the actresses, Katelyn Shaw, Anna Sargent and Gabby Colby-George, who play the Brontë sisters, appear in modern clothes recalling the real lives of the Brontë family and their books. They then dress in period clothing and became the three Brontë sisters. The show went from scene to scene depicting the hard times of being female authors in the nineteenth century, as well as difficult family situations, health, and the struggles of retaining one’s sanity.
Scenes changed by the sound of a book slamming closed, which almost always fell right in the middle of a heated conversation or important plot point. This could throw audience members off guard if they were not paying attention and not realizing that this was how scenes started and ended. In some cases, the characters from the sisters’ works being portrayed would be on stage when the books shut.
If you have not read any of the Brontë’s sisters work, such as “Jane Eyre” or “Wuthering Heights”, the reference to their characters appearing on stage during multiple scenes is very confusing. The Brontë sister’s’ works are very challenging to understand, The stage presences of characters from each of the sisters’ fictional works, while excellently acted, struggled to give context as to why they appeared on stage. (Allison Irons)

Diane Fare's column in Keighley News summarizes a very intense week at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

You will hopefully have seen the news that on November 18 we successfully bid at an auction in Paris for one of Charlotte Brontë’s Little Books, written when she was just 14 years old.
We had managed to crowdfund a whopping £85,000, thanks to the generosity of over one thousand supporters, and with funds raised through various other organisations, we knew we were going to auction with a competitive bid, but this of course is no guarantee, so as we gathered in the Parsonage staff-room to watch the auction live, it really was a nail-biting experience!
Colleagues spent all day inundated with press enquiries from far and wide, and so it was great that Monday turned out to be a ‘good news’ day, and that this very Yorkshire story garnered interest around the world.
I think the 14-year-old Charlotte, who was once told by the then Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, that ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life’, would have been delighted with the global attention centred on her Little Book!
And I want to say a big thank you to any readers who donated towards the crowdfunding campaign – we couldn’t have done it without you.
As I write this, it is just five weeks until Christmas, and so our thoughts are turning to all things festive, and some final events of the year.
Our final Tuesday talk of the year is on December 3 at 2pm, and is fittingly entitled ‘Patrick’s Afterlife’.
When Elizabeth Gaskell published her biography of Charlotte Brontë in 1857, she depicted Patrick as a distant father who was eccentric and unpredictable, and this image stuck until Juliet Barker’s biography The Brontës was published in the 1990s, and presented a very different image.
This talk examines the eventful journey of Patrick’s afterlife, and how he has been portrayed on page and screen.
We also have our final late-night Thursday of the year – and it’s the one where we crack open the sherry!
Join us on Thursday December 12 for a glass of sherry, some Christmas cheer and the chance to see the Parsonage dressed for the Christmas season.
The museum shop will be open to buy last-minute gifts – and we have some lovely Christmas cards too. As always, after 5pm, entry is free to visitors living in BD22, BD21, BD20 or Thornton. Usual admission prices apply to all other visitors. And last entry is 7pm!
From Thursday December 12 we also have our popular Wreath Making Workshops. We have one on Thursday at 2pm, and further workshops on Saturday December 14 at 2pm, and Sunday December 15 at 10.30am and 2pm.
There are still a few places left, so if you’d like to make a festive wreath for your front door inspired by the traditional Christmas decorations at the museum,, then don’t delay in booking your place.

The Little Book's auction appears also in Smithsonian Magazine,  L'Est Républicain (France), Politik (Greece), Eidiseis (Greece), El Economista (México)...

Barbara Taylor Bradford's Cultural Fix in The Times:

My favourite author or book
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I first read it when I was ten years old and like many people thought it was a romantic story. Only when I was an adult did I recognise that it was all about Heathcliff seeking revenge and destroying Catherine Earnshaw’s family. It has two narrators: Mr Lockwood and Nelly Dean, the housekeeper who witnessed the dramas at Wuthering Heights. I consider Emily Brontë to be one of the great geniuses in English literature.

The Guardian reviews some recent crime novels:

The Vanished Bride (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99) is the first in a new series featuring the Brontë sisters as “lady detectors”, by bestselling author Rowan Coleman (writing – with a nod to the real Emily’s nom de plume – as Bella Ellis). It’s 1845, and the peace of Haworth parsonage is shattered when brother Branwell brings Charlotte, Emily and Anne news of the disappearance and presumed murder of Elizabeth, second wife of Robert Chester of nearby Chester Grange. After some initial grinding of gears as the plot gets under way, things proceed smoothly into gothic territory, with hidden panels, incriminating notes and doubts over the fate of the first Mrs Chester. Brontë fans will undoubtedly get the most out of this: possible inspirations for Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are everywhere. But you don’t need insider knowledge to enjoy either the splendid adventure, or the touching and often funny portrayal of the sisters’ devotion to and exasperation with one another and their debauched brother. (Laura Wilson)

Grazia Daily lists some of the contemporary period films:

Wuthering Heights
There have been many attempts to bring Wuthering Heights to screens big and small, but the fact remains that Emily Brontë's only novel tends to elude straightforward adaptations: it's far too weird and uncomfortable a proposition for that. But director Andrea Arnold (the woman behind Fishtank and last year's American Honey)'s take on the classic is anything but straightforward. Ditching the bonnets and flowery speeches (and generating some flustered headlines for casting a black actor, James Howson, as Heathcliff) this is Wuthering Heights redux, a film that's as stark and moody as Brontë's original. (Lillian Sesiguzel)

A mention to Wuthering Heights in The Globe and Mail Book Club:

That cannot possibly be an icy dead hand, the traveller Lockwood thinks at the beginning of Wuthering Heights, as Cathy's petulant ghost reaches through the broken window. (Elizabeth Renzetti)

Talkhouse and high art vs low art:

Adults now make up over half of YA’s readership, and like Marvel fans, many of these readers insist that their beloved genre is as serious or worthy than any other. Except, of course, it isn’t. Young Adult isn’t really a genre at all – it includes sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance and social novels, whose only commonality is that their ideas and language are simple enough for young people to grasp. (Some argue that “coming-of-age” is the primary characteristic of YA, but then why are the works of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë and Esi Edugyan strangely absent from its shelves?) (Andrew Matthews)

Babygaga and baby names:

Brontë
The Brontë sisters are some more celebrated writers from the past; Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
All three of them could be honored if/when parents opt for the name Brontë when naming a child. This is a unique one. It has an elegance to it. And it is perfect for lovers of poetry and novels. (Bri Thomas)

Why do teachers make us read old stories? in IOL (SouthAfrica):

Additionally, many modern stories are based on older stories. To name only one, Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” has turned up in so many novels since its original publication in 1848 that there are entire articles and book chapters about its influence and importance.
For example, I found references to “Jane Eyre” lurking in “The Princess Diaries,” the “Twilight” series and a variety of other novels. So reading the old story can enrich the experience of the new. (Elisabeth Gruner)

Art Tribune (Italy) reviews the graphic novel Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna & Ramón K. Pérez:

La giovane protagonista si chiama Jane Eyre, come allora, e ha il carattere deciso che ci aspettiamo da lei. Ma stavolta vive nel New England, non nella vecchia Inghilterra. Ed è nella New York odierna che approda, col desiderio di studiare arte; ma per sbarcare il lunario finisce a fare la babysitter della piccola deliziosa Adele, figlia unica dell’anaffettivo Rochester, uomo ricchissimo e scorbutico non meno che piuttosto misterioso. E fin qui tutto fila più o meno come nell’originale. Ma, giustamente, il nuovo adattamento ha bisogno di staccarsi dalla tradizione e, al di là delle inevitabili semplificazioni sull’articolato e arcinoto plot originario, peraltro non significativamente mortificanti, si fa opera del tutto contemporanea grazie al suo squisito andamento cinematografico. (Ferruccio Gironimi) (Translation)

de Volkskrant (Netherlands) interviews Rachel Cusk:

Veel beroemde vrouwelijke schrijvers zijn nooit aan later werk toegekomen: Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, de gezusters Brontë. De rol die stilte heeft gespeeld in de geschiedenis van de vrouwenstem wordt vanuit dat perspectief bezien nog meer beladen: ze heeft iets van de kracht van een openbaring. (Translation)

Vanilla Magazine (Italy) and real love:

Per questo, probabilmente, ci fanno sognare gli amori di qualche signorina talmente perbene che nella sua vita li ha solo sognati (ma con quanta passione li ha sognati!) come la Jane Austen di “Orgoglio e pregiudizio” o la Emily Brontë di “Cime tempestose”, e non la contabilità sessuale di certi personaggi che mettono in fila conquiste fatte in serie e pressoché indistinguibili l’una dall’altra. Non è solo una questione di saper scrivere o no, tutti diamo giustamente per scontato che non possa esserci partita tra Emily Brontë e Melissa P. Anche chi sa scrivere davvero, come Henry Miller, quando ci parla delle sue conquiste, lo leggiamo perché ci piace come scrive, non perché ci racconta di quello. (Roberto Cocchis) (Translation)

Marie Claire (Spain) vindicates Anne Brontë. Eyes on Cinema (in Arabic) reviews Wuthering Heights 2011. Invisible Pink Dragon posts about the in Kdrama inside Jane Eyre. Lesley Jenike publishes an essay on Ploughshares at Emerson College:Wuthering Heights and Language Play. The  Sisters' Room posts about hair jewellery and the Brontës.