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  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
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Sunday, February 02, 2020

The Guardian interviews Isabel Greenberg, author of the graphic novel Glass Town, publishing an extract of her book:
When Isabel Greenberg’s third graphic novel begins, it is July 1849. A young woman with a pugnacious jaw and a pair of unflattering spectacles on the end of her nose is striding out across a moor, oblivious both to the damp underfoot – the book’s first frame shows nothing more than a ladylike boot splashing through a puddle – and to the looming clouds above. Tiny in her bonnet beneath the vast, steely sky, this woman, for all her determination, strikes the reader as terribly alone.
And she is alone, for this is the writer Charlotte Brontë. In the course of the past year, she has lost all three of her living siblings – Anne, Branwell and Emily – to tuberculosis; she is still deep in grief. But then something strange happens. No sooner has she spread a blanket over the heather, and taken off her bonnet, than a dashing fellow suddenly appears beside her. He is not dressed for the moor. He wears a top hat, a scarlet cravat, dazzling white breeches and, somewhat incongruously, a pair of sunglasses. Who is he? Is this peacock with the spiky, rock-star hair real, or is he a figment of her imagination?
In fact, he’s the latter – though as Greenberg points out, in the case of the Brontës, reality and the life of the imagination are sometimes difficult to separate. “In Charlotte’s diaries [sic], there’s a bit where Anne and Emily are sitting at the kitchen table, talking about baking bread or something, and then they just switch into what’s happening in Gondal as casually as if they’re discussing the weather,” she says. (Read more) (Rachel Cooke)
Keighley News also reports how the little book that was acquired last year has finally been displayed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
An extremely rare and significant ‘little book’, written by Charlotte Brontë in 1830 when she was just 14 years old, has returned to Haworth and the home where it was written.
It went on display to the public for the first time at the Brontë Parsonage Museum this morning.
In November 2019 The Brontë Society was successful in its bid to bring back the item, following a campaign that gathered support from across the world and the backing of many of today’s leading creative thinkers and artists including Dames Judi Dench and Jacqueline Wilson. (...)
This is the fifth in the series of six ‘little books’ entitled ‘The Young Men’s Magazines’. Measuring just 35 x 61mm this tiny tome is now displayed alongside numbers 1, 3, 4 and 6 in the Museum’s collection when the Museum re-opens for the season.
The location of number 2 has been unknown since around 1930.
Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: “The campaign to bring this wonderful item home was emotional; seeing so many people from across the world come together to support us really has been a highlight of my career.
"Now, seeing the book in place alongside the others in the series, makes it all worthwhile.
"It was always meant to be here in Haworth and we know that the thousands of visitors eagerly awaiting its arrival will love seeing it back where it belongs, continuing to inspire generation upon generation and enriching lives far beyond the walls where it was originally created almost 200 years ago.” (Tim Quantrill)
Also published in Телеканал (in Russian), ISNA (Iran)...

The Telegraph & Argus also recommends a visit to the new Anne exhibition (a collection of pictures of the exhibition can be seen on Maggie Gardiner's Facebook wall):
A new exhibition for Anne Brontë's bicentenary.
Anne’s life and work have had much less exploration than those of her sisters.
This new exhibition will delve into key elements of Anne’s life, from her childhood at the Parsonage, to how her legacy has been shaped by others since her death. (Mark Stanford)
KSL TV discusses the film Rebecca 1940:
"'Rebecca' was a Brontë thing really, a romantic Victorian novel in modern dress. In a sense you could get annoyed with the Joan Fontaine character because she never stood up for herself, she let Mrs. Danvers override her. But after all that's applying a modern point of view to what I say is a Victorian heroine."
More Rebecca mentions in this AuthorLink interview with the author Karen Dukess:
Ellen Birkett Morris: What authors and novels about literary life influenced your writing of The Last Book Party? Are there other novels you looked to for guidance?
Karen Dukess: I’m not sure I was influenced by novels about the literary life, but I was influenced by two novels that are near and dear to my heart – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Both are novels about young women who find themselves somewhat out of their league in the homes of older men they are attracted to. In both novels, the protagonist senses that things aren’t what they seem without understanding why. The novels examine jealousy and secrets and capture the excruciating way a young woman can yearn to be older and more sophisticated without realizing that there is strength in being herself. And, of course Rebecca climaxes at a costume party that the protagonist thinks will be her triumph but which becomes an evening of shattering disclosures. I had that in mind when I wrote the costume party scene in The Last Book Party. I also looked to Goodbye, Columbus for structural guidance as that novella also takes place over a single summer.
Louder Sound interviews actor, comedian, writer, and musician Matt Berry:
“I was freaked out by Bowie. And I was completely petrified by Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights on TV. Anyone I was scared of I was interested by so I followed them and bought their records, once I got the balls. I saw these amazing creatures and I’d think, I want to hear that, that’s not a pop song! With Kate, I’d pick The Kick Inside, Never Forever and Lionheart for these brilliant, rustic atmospheres that I like. Hounds Of Love is good, but too 80s for me, everything overproduced. (Jo Kendall)
The Yorkshire Post talks about the upcoming  Bill Brandt/Henry Moore exhibition running at the Hepworth Wakefield:
This found its finest expression in Brandt’s book Literary Britain, which explores landscapes and buildings linked to great writers. They include bleak pictures of windswept West Yorkshire moorland inspired by the Brontës. Brandt might spend a whole day over a single shot, waiting for the light to be just right. (Stephen McClare)
America Magazine reviews the TV adaptation of Jane Austen's Sanditon:
Along the way there is a cricket match and a regatta, a few assorted balls, a medical demonstration by a comic-opera German doctor and much clattering of horse carriages and strolls on the beach. Less fully developed, even half-hearted, are a few plot strands that bring class and race to the forefront in a way that feels more like Thomas Hardy or one of the Brontës than Austen. (Rob Weiner-Kendt)
Observador (Portugal) has an article all about Anne Brontë:
Anne. A mais sossegada e piedosa das irmãs Brontë foi a mais revolucionária.
As histórias de pendor realista levaram a que fosse injustamente considerada a mais aborrecida das irmãs Brontë. A importância de temas como os direitos das mulheres tornaram-na uma revolucionária.
Desde a publicação da hoje infame biografia de Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, que Anne Brontë tem sido descrita como a mais sossegada, a mais frágil e também a mais religiosa das irmãs Brontë. As suas obras, insistentemente comparadas às de Charlotte e à de Emily, tem sido apontadas como inferiores, desinteressantes e até aborrecidas devido ao seu pendor realista e o seu estilo menos aventureiro. Em termos estilísticos, talvez Anne seja de facto a Brontë menos revolucionária, mas o mesmo não se pode dizer sobre os temas que escolheu abordar nos seus romances e que, na época, causaram burburinho. (Rita Cipriano) (Translation) 
Trouw (Netherlands) explores the controversial legacy of Franz Joseph Gall, one of the founders of phrenology:
Sporen daarvan zien we terug in de kunsten. Kijk maar eens naar de zelfportretten van Caspar David Friedrich – koppen die exact voldeden aan het frenologische ideaalbeeld. Of lees Jane Eyre – “Bevalt mijn voorhoofd u niet?” Allemaal tamelijk onschuldig, totdat frenologen de raciale kaart trokken. Getuige hun ingedrukte tronies waren de Kalmukken en de Papoea’s van nature rovers. (Elias van der Plicht) (Translation)
La Nación (Argentina) mentions Jane Eyre and Taz (Germany) Wuthering Heights 2009 in reviews of the film Little Women 2019. Omelete (in Portuguese) lists some of the new films on the Amazon Prime Video February catalogue, including Jane Eyre 1996. Country Living considers that living near the Brontë Parsonage Museum increases the value of your property by 24%.

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