'Anglo-Irish psychology of uneasy inheritances and divided loyalties'

The Irish Times reviews Martina Devlin's novel Charlotte.

Martina Devlin’s novel adopts the ambivalent perspective of the widowed Mary in 1913, as she looks back over decades of accommodating her emotional needs to Arthur’s continued devotion to Charlotte’s memory. Now legal owner of the remaining collection of Brontëana – which Arthur has already begun disposing of, as household finances become straitened in consequence of the Land Acts – Mary is increasingly tempted to sell the rest, while media interest in Charlotte is intensifying following the (real-life) publication in The Times of her impassioned letters to her married tutor Constantin Heger.

Mary’s memories (and, perhaps, imaginings) range from her brief acquaintance with Charlotte during her honeymoon in post-Famine Ireland in 1854, through the years of her own marriage to Arthur. Her narrative is interspersed with fictional documents including letters, interview transcripts and a mysterious manuscript story, while episodes recalling Brontë's life and novels blend with a fictional subplot concerning an illegitimate birth.

Like Devlin’s previous novel, Edith (2022), Charlotte articulates an Anglo-Irish psychology of uneasy inheritances and divided loyalties – though crowded incidents and a sprawling timeline prevent it from achieving the atmospheric intensity, or the narrative momentum, that Edith’s tightly focalised, linear structure enabled.

Exploration of Brontë's own half-Irish, half-English identity is meanwhile frustratingly confined to the realms of counterhistorical fantasy, as Charlotte flees her Dublin honeymoon to visit her Brunty relations in Co Down, in defiance of Patrick’s shame over their folksy ways and Catholic ancestry. Her uncle William Brunty’s activities in 1798 are hinted at only in an ironic comment from Arthur (“Who knows what else there is to be dug up? Irish rebels, I shouldn’t wonder”), and in two incidents where the Nichollses are menaced by the Bruntys’ rooster, named Henry Joy McCracken. Charlotte, at least, is forgiving: “He was defending his territory.” (Jenny McAuley)

The Telegraph and Argus interviews local artist Steve Spencer.

Q: Does anything in the local area inspire you?

A: The vast moorlands that straddle the South Pennines are landscapes that are constantly changing. For thousands of years people have inhabited this often harsh, but beautiful environment and left their mark through carved stones, dry stone walls, managed grouse moors and wind turbines.

When I began to draw and paint the moors the expanse of the landscape filled my surface. As I explored I began to take more notice of the objects that inhabit this wild landscape and how they endure against the severe effects of the elements.

More recently I have become aware of the impact man is having on our moorlands and how I relate to them in comparison with past inhabitants such as Late Neolithic and Bronze Age communities, and literary figures like The Bronte Sisters. The landscape I walk through is very different to the one that these people would have experienced. (Helen Mead)

The Edge (Singapore) tries to make the case for AI technology applied to reading.

Part of the reason may be the sheer amount of time it takes to complete an opus that transcends a lifetime. Would you devote your evenings to arguing with Socrates about morals or sparring with Dante about politics and spirituality? The urgent need of slotting historical literature into some sort of forced contemporary relevance is making these tomes less enjoyable. 
Case in point: Wuthering Heights is withering.

No dedicated bibliophile ever feels fully secure in their own reading accomplishments. So, before you castigate yourself for not burying your nose in a book you should have, experts are telling us that classics are not austere endurance tests. In fact, an e-reading tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) named Rebind, which utilises technology similar to ChatGPT that replicates dialogue between student and teacher, seeks to rekindle your love and faith in all the things good writing can do. (Kong Wai Yeng)

That's simply awful and existed already as abridged classics.

The Daily Campus still opts for the real thing--thank goodness--and recommends several reads for autumn days.

“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë 

The world-renowned “Wuthering Heights” centers on the intense, tumultuous relationship between Heathcliff, an orphaned foundling, and Catherine Earnshaw, his childhood companion.  

Set on the Yorkshire Moors in England, this gothic classic resembles all that is fair in love and war. The destructiveness of love intertwines with the futility of revenge, creating perhaps the most popular Victorian classic to date. The somber landscapes that coincide with an all-consuming tale of love embodies the autumn we love to romanticize.  

Brontë displays how the pursuit of love and beauty is not always successful, and how that can stem into generational trauma. Though eloquent in theory, “Wuthering Heights” is a psychological nightmare that is practically gut-wrenching. If a horrifically immersing Victorian novel on a crisp fall evening doesn’t scream autumn to you, I don’t know what does. (Grace Jos)

Jane Eyre's Library features a 1998 abridged edition of Jane Eyre translated into Basque.