The Brontë Birthplace Project (and more things)

The Brontë Birthplace Project is a crowdfunding initiative for buying the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton
for the local community. The Yorkshire Post reports:

This project will only be funded if at least £20,000 is pledged by 12th September 2022 at 12:23pm.

Crowdfunder launches to save the birthplace of the Brontë sisters for the people of Bradford

Haworth is synonymous with Yorkshire's most famous literary family - but the birthplace of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë some six miles away has never received as much attention. (...)

A creative community group, the Brontë Birthplace Project, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy the terraced house and renovate it as an events space and accommodation.

Some £450,000 is needed to fund both the purchase and the first two years of running the property, with the campaign group initially trying to raise £20,000 through crowdfunding.

Campaigners, part of Thornton’s South Square Centre, are also intending to apply for Government and lottery match funding.

The group has been told by the current owner Mark De Luca that he will give them first preference on purchasing the house if they can raise the money by Christmas. (...)

Retired academic Sarah Dixon, member of the Brontë Birthplace Project, said: “We will use the space to do all sorts of cultural and literary activities.

“This is not just a Thornton project - this is a project for all of Bradford.

“It’s such a perfect fit at this time because of Bradford being awarded the City of Culture 2025. What could be more famous in Bradford than the Brontës?”

The group are in talks both with the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth and the city’s council about how to maximise tourist potential to Thornton should the purchase be successful.

Ideas include opening an Air BnB on the first floor of the birthplace and creating a new walk across the moors from Thornton to Haworth.

Mrs Dixon said: “If we don’t take this opportunity now - there was an attempt a few years ago and it failed - it could deteriorate, we believe. It needs protecting.” (Victoria Finan)

A study revealing the best locations to visit for book lovers in the Daily Express:

Top 35 must-see locations for book lovers - with Brontë sisters' home coming out on top. (...)

Darren Hardy, author and editorial programmes manager at Amazon, which commissioned the research to launch the Kindle Storyteller Award, celebrating the best self-published stories, said: “It is such an exciting time to be in the independent publishing space.(...)

“Some of my favourite literary sites, like Coleridge's Nether Stowey, the Brontës' Haworth, or DH Lawrence's Eastwood, also feature truly wonderful and significant houses where the rooms in which the writers were born, or wrote some of their key works, are preserved for all generations.”

The study also revealed the nation’s favourite British writers – with Charles Dickens, who can count “Oliver Twist” and “A Christmas Carol” among his works, coming out on top.

He was followed by Charlotte Brontë and George Orwell – while Emily Brontë and Virginia Woolf, legendary female novelists who paved the way with their literary classics including “Wuthering Heights” and “Mrs Dalloway”, were just behind. (...)

The Kindle Storyteller Award is open for entries until 31st August 2022.

TOP 35 LITERARY LOCATIONS – AS VOTED BY READERS:

1. Haworth – home of the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne (Sarah Lumley)

Also in The Sun, The Mirror,  Wigan Today. Edinburgh News, This is Oxfordshire.

The Scarborough News suggests books set in Yorkshire to read and visit their locations:

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

A classic novel that helped to give Brontë Country in West Yorkshire its name, Jane Eyre is an epic 600-page account of Jane’s life, from young orphan to domestic bliss with Mr Rochester, through her experiences in her teaching career, bigamy, homelessness and more.

The book has inspired film versions and stage adaptations including one this year at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. (...)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë only wrote one novel in her life, but what a novel it is. Her story of the passionate, and ultimately destructive love between the headstrong Catherine and brooding Heathcliff is a true classic of English literature. It is set on the dark, stormy moors – including Top Withins – above Haworth where the Brontes lived. (Sue Wilkinson) 

The Times reminds us of one of the most epic failures in Jeremy Paxman's University Challenge: 

Paxman’s style, inherited from his time skewering politicians, marked a break from his affable predecessor, Bamber Gascoigne, but he still saw the humour in some of his students’ most egregious errors. In one episode, a student from Imperial College London guessed the name of the romantic lead Orson Welles and Michael Fassbender had both played in film adaptations of a work by Charlotte Brontë as Inspector Clouseau. Paxman put his head in his hands and between laughs proclaimed it “one of the funniest misapprehensions we’ve ever had”.

Book Riot recommends YA novels like:

You should read something paranormal, literary, and lyrical, like Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood. This YA, Ethiopian-inspired Jane Eyre retelling starts when a young debtera named Andromeda is hired to exorcise a large mansion of specters of the Evil Eye. The young heir Rochester, who hired her, doesn’t treat her like a servant. In fact, an undeniable attachment begins to form between them as the spirits of the house fight back against both Andromeda and Rochester. (Alison Doherty)

The Christian Century reviews Heathen by Kathryn Gin Lum:

I inevitably had some disagreements. When I teach about global Chris­tianity, I often use Charlotte Brontë’s 1846 poem “The Missionary” to explain what drove those evangelistic endeavors. The poem perfectly epitomizes the view of those overseas races as “the weak, trampled by the strong,” who “live but to suffer—hopeless die.” They are subject to “pagan-priests, whose creed is Wrong, / Extor­tion, Lust, and Cruelty,” until they can be liberated by White Christians. This is exactly the thought world of Heathen, and the poem vividly illustrates the overlap of racist and anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Quite reasonably, Gin Lum does not quote Brontë’s poem, because it is not American and therefore falls outside her purview. But that in itself raises an issue. Are the attitudes and concepts explored in Heathen in fact distinctively American, or did they rather belong to a much broader phenomenon which was more generically Protestant—emphatically British, but also German and Northern European? (Philip Jenkins)

The author Michelle Zauner answers the Shelf Life questions of Elle magazine:

The book that ...features the most beautiful jacket:
Last year on tour I picked up a beautiful vintage hardcover of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, which features such illustrations as Procession of Lowood Orphan Girls in Gothic Dress. (Riza Cruz)

Still some reactions to Emily's trailer: Harper's Bazaar, Red Magazine, Lubimyczytać (Poland), Taxidrivers (Italy), The Best (Greece), The United Business Journal...

The New Barcelona Post (Spain) talks about the publisher Blanca Pujals:

Como para muchas, Jane Austen tuvo un papel esencial en su carrera como devora libros insaciable. Las historias de Elisabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot o Emma Woodhouse se convirtieron en indiscutibles de su librería a una temprana edad, abriendo la puerta a descubrir a otras autoras como las hermanas Brontë: “Con ellas, se crean lectoras para siempre”. Es por ello que se sorprendió cuando vio que clásicos como Sentido y sensibilidad, Mansfield Park, Agnes Grey, Una habitación con vistas o La formación de una marquesa no estaban publicados en catalán. (...)

De momento, ya llevan siete libros en la nueva colección de Viena. El último, una sorpresa, Las confesiones del señor Harrison de Elizabeth Gaskell. El octavo, según avanza Pujals, coincidirá con el Día de Todos los Santos y será Drácula. La editora piensa en Stranger Things para introducir el imprescindible de Bram Stoker. Para más adelante llegará otro clásico, siempre polémico e inclasificable, Cumbres Borrascosas de Emily Brontë. (Cristina Martín Valbuena) (Translatiuon)

EspectáculosBCN (Spain) lists classic books not-to-be-missed:

Cumbres Borrascosas fue repudiada y ridiculizada cuando se publicó por su estructura, su violento discurso y oscuros personajes. Es un libro complejo que suele ser amado u odiado, sin tintas medias. Pero, innegablemente rompió paradigmas, y se atrevió a mostrar un amor sin idealizar que colinda con odio y venganza. Hay que leerlo con cabeza fría y valentía. (Aimara Villanueva) (Translation)

Lotta Olsson in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) apparently didn't enjoy their Haworth experience:

I stället ska vi till Haworth och betyga vår vördnad för systrarna Brontë, och vi kommer ända till parkeringen i Haworth. Där trasslar vi in oss i en obegriplig parkeringsautomat och dessutom blir jag omotiverat arg på hela turistverksamheten. Vad har det här med systrarna Brontë att göra, egentligen? (Translation)

Bölge Gündem (Turkey) lists Jane Eyre 'emotional' quotes.