What inspired Wuthering Heights? In this short documentary, narrated by former Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, and directed by Tim Brearley, we take a journey across the Yorkshire Moors to Haworth to find that the romantic myth of Emily as ‘The Mystic of the Moors’ hides a more complex and fascinating truth.With the help of Emily Brontë’s biographers, Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies, her connection to the land and the intellectual life of her time is examined and presents a picture of a woman very different from our convention picture of her from the various films of her classic novel. (Norman Lebrecht)
Directed and Produced by Tim BrearleyProduced by Samphire Productios for Channel 5 (28 Dec 2003)Presented by Chris Smith, MPMusic by Sarah ClassWith Clare Barrett as Emily Brontë, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. LockwoodWith Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies.
Reeta Chakrabarti is wonderfully eloquent when talking to Eastern Eye about her debut novel, Finding Belle, which she says has been “inspired” by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, rather than a retelling of the classic published in 1847. (...)Reeta said she has always been a bookworm and read Jane Eyre at the age of eight. Five novels she would take to a desert island would include Jane Eyre, (...)She said Jane Eyre “is the book I have read most”. When she was growing up, she was “consumed by the romance between Jane and Rochester”.“But then as I got older, I started to think Rochester is q
uite a bastard because he locks up his wife in a cellar. She’s ill, very ill, but instead of finding a treatment, he locks her up. Then he leads Jane a merry dance. The themes within Jane Eyre are of secrecy, a marriage where the wife becomes very mentally ill and is hidden away. She’s a shameful secret, and our attitudes to mental illness these days are entirely different. So that’s where my novel comes from. Schizophrenia is a particular form of psychosis whereby somebody, who may lead their lives fairly normally, can have delusions so they hear voices or imagine scenarios that are not real. This is the condition that I decided to give my fictional character, based on the classical reference to Bertha from Jane Eyre.” (Amit Roy)
Jane Eyre 2011Mia Wasikowska stars as Jane Eyre, a resilient young woman who, after enduring a traumatic childhood, receives an education and eventually accepts a job as a governess at the home of Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). As Eyre and Rochester begin to fall in love, Eyre learns there's more to her new love interest than she ever expected, forcing her to flee and find comfort in the company of another, St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell).Jane Eyre is a classic romance that has been adapted into several films, but the most recent adaptation is easily one of the finest. The 2011 version received immense praise and earned dozens of awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Wasikowska gives Brontë's famous heroine immense justice, delivering a highly underrated performance alongside an equally exceptional cast. (Andrea Ciriaco)
A couple of TMWHDE news: Otago Daily Times (Dunedin) and The Inverness Courier (Cromarty).
The Giornale di Puglia (Italy) illustrates an article about Emily Brontë with a very unlikely A.I. Emily.
Jane is a captivating story about an improbable romance between a modest girl who stumbles across the extravagant world of her rock star lover, while at the same time, an engrossing mystery as secrets from Rathburn’s past are slowly revealed. In Jane, Lindner recycles a successful formula that has attracted a huge fan base with the Twilight series of books in recent years.Other recent reviews can be read on Las Risas and Fragments of Life.
However, novels like Lindner’s Jane inspire a new generation of readers, and engender respect for classic literature. Lindner’s modern Jane is persistently loyal to Charlotte Brontë’s 19th-century protagonist Jane Eyre in substance and character, with the exception of the contemporary rock star edge. And much like its 19th-century predecessor, gossip-obsessed millennium teens will likely find Linder’s Jane hard to resist. (Santina Tedesco)
Julie Harris won her fifth Tony Award portraying Emily Dickinson in Luce's The Belle of Amherst, was nominated for a sixth for Lucifer's Child (in which she played Isak Dinesen) and earned a Peabody Award for playing Charlotte Brontë on PBS — all with Luce scripts. (Richard Ouzounian)The Guardian publishes the answers to its fiendish literary quiz. Sarah Waters's questions among them:
2 In which novels do these dogs appear: Evie, Tock, Pilot, Jasper, Mister Mars, the dog of tears.The Times looks for the ones to watch in 2011:
Answer: JR Ackerley's We Think the World of You, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Iris Murdoch's Under the Net, José Saramago's Blindness[.]
Imogen Poots. In March she squeezes into a corset and bustle as Blanche Ingram in Cary Fukunaga’s update of Jane Eyre. (Kate Muir)
Stephen Poliakoff, director and screenwriter: My one to watch next year is Michelle Dockery. Michelle has an edgy mystery about her and an aloof beauty. I first saw her on an audition tape for the BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre in 2006. She lost the part to Ruth Wilson, but I thought she was startling. (Andrew Billen)The Telegraph interviews journalist Genevieve Fox:
Favourite book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë for the heroine’s rebellious spirit and her bravery. A proto-feminist with soul.The Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) covers the Dunedin Theatre Awards where the Fortune Theatre's Wuthering Heights production obtained a couple of awards:
Best Design (Technical)The Telegraph & Argus lists some of the local post-Christmas events:
Peter King: Wuthering Heights, Fortune Theatre (winner)
Best Design (Scenographic)
Peter King: Wuthering Heights, Fortune Theatre (nominee)
Best Performance (Female)
Anna Henare: Wuthering Heights, Fortune Theatre (winner)
Best Director
Lisa Warrington: Wuthering Heights, Fortune Theatre (nominee)
Production of the Year
Wuthering Heights: Fortune Theatre (nominee)
The New Year’s Eve traditional event is the Auld Lang Syne fell-race, started by a bagpiper on top of Penistone Hill Park. The race is full but offers onlookers a spectacular course towards Brontë Bridge and Haworth Moor. The 400 runners head off at 11.30am on their six-mile run up 900ft of ascent. (Simon Forde)Mid-Willamette Valley Statesman Journal recommends Barnes & Noble Classics for Christmas:
I recently discovered these amazing stocking stuffers: classic works of literature like "A Tale of Two Cities," "The Art of War," "Peter Pan," "The Complete Sherlock Holmes," "Jane Eyre," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and many more. Each title is nicely bound (many contain illustrations) and under 10 bucks. (Barbara Curtin)Zeit (Germany) also gives some Christmas book suggestions. One of them is Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair:
Erwachsene, die Harry Potter mit Freude gelesen und die enorme Fantasie von J.K. Rowling bewundert haben, werden auch an der gewaltigen Erfindungsgabe von Jasper Fforde ihren Spaß haben. Der Brite hat in seiner Romanreihe um die Agentin Thursday Next eine Parallelwelt erschaffen, ein England des Jahres 1985, in dem Literatur einen so hohen Stellenwert hat, dass es eine Spezialpolizei gibt – den Arbeitgeber der Romanheldin. Zugleich vermischen sich in jenem England Fantasie und Wirklichkeit. So kann im ersten Band der Serie, Der Fall Jane Eyre, Nexts Gegenspieler die englische Regierung damit erpressen, dass er Jane Eyre aus dem gleichnamigen Roman von Charlotte Brontë entführt. Klingt schräg? Ist es auch. Und unglaublich unterhaltsam, spannend und komisch. Die Thursday-Next-Serie ist ein ideales Geschenk für jemanden, der ein Faible für britische Literatur hat, Agentenstorys mag und Humor à la Monty Python und Douglas Adams schätzt. (Matthias Breitinger) (Microsoft translation)Concert & Co (France) reviews the album Philarmonics by Agnes Obel:
Quand elle officie au piano et au micro, on se laisse transporter dans un univers étrange faisant jaillir des images de contes de fée aux atmosphères gothiques ou romantiques, un peu à la Emilie Brontë. Sorte de Hauts de Hurlevent mis en musique, les pièces écrites et interprétées par Mademoiselle Obel intriguent, font souffler un vent de folie et permettent de plonger dans une sorte de noirceur aussi élégiaque que fantastique. (Microsoft translation)La Dépêche reviews the novel Les Roses d'en Julio by Rosie Guilhem:
L'intrigue, qui confine à celle du conte, se situe dans l'environnement quotidien de Rosie où l'on retrouve les deux énormes platanes devenus « la porte des âmes », un petit carrefour qui amène au bois maléfique d'En Guibaud, le plateau et les précipices d'En Julio envahis de brouillards et même de périodes de neige, des descriptions concises qui ramènent à l'atmosphère d'épouvante des sœurs Brontë. (Microsoft translation)Le Figaro interviews actress Anne Hathaway who confesses some of her inspirations for her role in Love and Other Drugs:
Pour interpréter ce rôle, elle est allée chercher dans ses lectures quelques personnages féminins bien trempés : « J’ai relu Orgueil et préjugés, de Jane Austen, et les Hauts de Hurlevent, d’Emily Brontë. Il n’y a rien de mieux que la littérature anglaise pour décrire ce genre de femmes stoïques. » (Isabelle Girard) (Microsoft translation)Knightleyemma posts about Wide Sargasso Sea 2006; The Prefecture of the East Administrative District of Moscow's website mentions a recent meeting-discussion with young students of Russia and Kazakhstan where the latter apparently mentioned Jane Eyre as one their preferred heroines.
In this stripped back and stunning adaptation, Sally Cookson has turned the greyness inside out and focussed on the incredible strength of spirit of this young woman whose character is diametrically opposed to the stereotypical woman of her time, and indeed could give lessons in plain speaking now.Edinburgh Evening News also gives it 4 stars.
From birth to Jane’s confined physical life, Nadia Clifford utterly embraces her character at every stage. With conviction, she portrays Jane as honest, sensitive and passionate on her journey to live independently at a time when the odds were particularly against her, seeing herself as nothing short of an equal to a man. ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’
Her bemusement at being asked to shed old boots and don fineries for her wedding to Tim Delap’s unkempt and ramshackle Rochester is especially stark.
Among the cast who take on several roles, Paul Mundell stands out with his beautifully enunciated Irish accent as Mr Brocklehurst, before bounding and wagging as Pilot the dog to the audience’s delight.
The poor demented Bertha Mason is represented by Melanie Marshall with haunting music that includes rich, tingly versions of Does that make me Crazy? and Mad about the Boy.
Michael Vale’s set, like a giant wooden playground with metal ladders, extracts necessarily highly physical performances from the ensemble cast who provide Jane’s inner thoughts and strike some dramatic tableaux.
Live music is played under a ceiling of Beaubourg style lights and pulleys that hold strings of surprises.
The whole performance is enclosed within three walls of giant white curtains that act as sponges for the lighting from Aideen Malone that evokes miserable rain streaks, the horrors of the red room where Jane is punished, and the blue of when ‘It is a bright sunny day. The rain is over and gone’.
Dominic Bilkey’s bone-shaking thunder and insistent rhythms of a steam train, that were signalling change in Brontë’s time, add to the atmosphere of this epic piece.
Sally Cookson’s radical version of Jane Eyre was originally presented in two parts at Bristol Old Vic. It then transferred to the National Theatre where it was re-imagined as a single performance which explains its three hour duration.
The call ‘It’s a girl!’ that opens and closes this audacious adaptation is a joyous battle cry. (Irene Brown)
In the title role, Nadia Clifford is a force of nature. Energetic, inquisitive and instantly engaging, she hops from vignette to vignette as Jane’s life unfolds in a collage of stylised movement and a clear, crisply delivered script. Scenes are further lifted by the gifted vocals of Melanie Marshall who sings the role of Bertha Mason. It is a stunning performance with some unexpectedly poignant renditions of familiar tunes, never more so than her electric delivery of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, during which you could hear a pin drop. Also on fine form is Lynda Rooke who slips effortlessly between Jane’s cold, bitter aunt, Mrs Reed, and the lovable, kindly house-keeper Mrs Fairfax. Two entirely disparate characters. As Rochester, Tim Delap’s ‘trite, commonplace sinner’ is an earnest man, peculiar, distracted and distant. Elsewhere, members of the company flit from role to role, creating, on the whole, beautiful little cameos. With the band on stage throughout (padding for Michael Vale’s stark modern design) the production soars until shortly into Act Two at which point the impetus is lost. An accessible, if slightly over-indulgent production then, but one that is well worth seeing, if you can afford the time. (Liam Rudden)The Reviews Hub also gives it 4 stars, summing it up as 'Confident and Compelling'.
Featuring a strong company of actors, each individual is well cast in their respective roles, delivering solid, confident performances. Nadia Clifford is a feisty, bolshy Jane unlike any you will have ever seen on the silver screen. Her Jane is no wilting wallflower, but instead a full-blooded, fiery, determined young woman, and Clifford’s passionate delivery of Jane’s lines (some of the longer speeches are lifted vertabim from the book) is stirring and heartfelt. Her Jane is also stoutly northern, although her accent wanders west of the Pennines if truth be told.The F Word reviews the play No Place for a Woman:
However. while it’s impressive that the company are able to morph into different parts, scenes such as the human stage coach lack some finesse and polish (perhaps due to a total lack of props). Moreover, while the part of Pilot is a tricky problem for a production team to solve, and though Paul Mundell is very convincing, it brings a little too much comedy to certain scenes, for example, the emotional finale.
The lighting design is simple but effective, enabling bright colour, such as the red room, to reflect boldly off the white voile that lines the three stage walls. However, more dimming of the lights between scenes would improve the fluidity of the drama – some of the staged deaths are rushed and lack dramatic pause; the actors standing up and walking off stage all of a sudden with the lights still up while other actors continue to look on.
The set is minimalist (typical of a National Theatre production) and generally functions well in enhancing the underlying themes of Jane Eyre. There are some clever sequences involving windows that serve as nice theatrical metaphors for Jane’s fluctuating imprisonment and liberation, and the positioning of different characters on the varying ladders and different levels of the stage set is heavy with symbolism but effective. Although it seems a lost opportunity that Bertha Mason appears more times at the lowest point on stage, often under Jane’s level, as opposed to above her (up in the attic).
The live musicians are fantastic and the singing, in particular the soulful, versatile voice of Melanie Marshall is mesmerising. However, overall musically, this production is saturated with too many different genres to the point where it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be and lacks cohesion. Though it’s impressive that hits like Mad About the Boy and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy have infiltrated the realm of the Brontës, it does seem rather forced. There are also musical episodes that seem to borrow from bands like The Lumineers, jazz and blues and there are even reminiscences of Colin Matthew’s World War One inspired No Man’s Land. Whilst, some of these influences seem appropriate, the overall musical impression is disjointed.
Overall, however, this is a confident and compelling production and re-interpretation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Moreover, it is a memorable and genuinely different version than that which audiences will have seen on TV and in cinemas. (S.E. Webster)
Mental health is not discussed explicitly, though it is a strong theme of the play. Annie’s symptoms are not taken quite as seriously by the people around her as they would be now. They are also simply misunderstood. Her behaviour and placement towards the end of the play are reminiscent of the ‘mad’ Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, who is locked away to try and contain violent and challenging behaviour which does not fit with the passive feminine ideal of the time. (Samuel Sims)And more theatre as The Times reviews Winter Hill at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in which
[Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker] flings about numerous cultural allusions, from the Brontës to Macbeth, from Aristophanes’s Lysistrata to the Easter Island statues. (Sam Marlowe)And a last note on stage matters as Otago Daily Times describes Rebecca Vaughan's one-woman-show, Jane Eyre. An Autobiography, recently seen at Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival as 'spellbinding'.
SIGNATURE: This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve taken a cue from classic literature, or art of the past. Among other works, last year you edited an anthology inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s infamous line, “Reader, I married him,” from Jane Eyre. Do you find yourself naturally gravitating towards the classics when working on your own writing?America Magazine doesn't like the Jane Eyre similarities and references in the latest screen adaptation of Anne of Green Gables.
TRACY CHEVALIER: It’s not deliberate. In both instances – Shakespeare and Jane Eyre – I was asked, and a commission is quite different from a natural inclination. Having said that, I do look to the past a lot for inspiration, and that is where most of the classics – whether books or paintings or tapestries or poets – lie. (Meghan McCullough)
It is the dark and unsettling tale of a poor orphan. Abused as a young child and then traumatized in an institution, the plain and wounded girl finally finds a place that feels like home. But as soon as she lets down her guard, the people she believed could offer her the love she longs for break her trust. Our heroine takes flight and wanders into the night with nowhere to lay her head.Lady Macbeth is back on BrontëBlog thanks to a review from Belper News:
Ah, the story of Jane Eyre, you might say. I know that bleak tale of woe and moor-wandering!
But you would be mistaken. It is “Anne With an E,” the new retelling of L. M. Montgomery’s whimsical Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables. [...]
The new series is full of Jane Eyre references (even the episode titles are drawn from Jane). The filming reminds one of Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 version of “Jane Eyre,” with its beautiful candlelit scenes, in which each frame could be a painting by Georges de la Tour. The new series makes Anne’s early years like those of young Jane, abused by the family she lived with. It turns Anne’s orphanage into Jane Eyre’s Lowood, and even the kind Reverend Allan of Montgomery’s book is warped into a grim Mr. Brocklehurst, who sternly lectures Anne about lying. The result certainly is not Montgomery’s Anne but a clumsy mix of painfully melodramatic additions that feel awkward next to the handful of excellent scenes that bring life to the original tale. (Haley Stewart)
Later, the screen relaxes soaking up moorland landscapes with an enthusiasm reminiscent of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights. (Natalie Stendall)This is not the first time we read about Céline Dion's song It's All Coming Back to Me Now and its connection to Wuthering Heights. The Awl is not thrilled about it:
[Songwriter Jim Steinman] also says on his website that he wrote the song, “under the influence of Wuthering Heights.” This checks out — the song is melodramatic and tortured as hell. Consider the first verse:
There were nights when the wind was so cold / That my body froze in bed if I just listened to it / Right outside the window / There were days when the sun was so cruel / That all the tears turned to dust / And I just knew my eyes were drying up forever. The song goes on to paint the picture of a narrator who “banished every memory you and I had ever made,” likely due to the fact that the relationship was a very abusive one. A later verse explains:
There were those empty threats and hollow lies / And whenever you tried to hurt me / I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper. That’s not great. While this does bring up the specter of physical abuse, with all the context around the song, it seems more clear this is a kind of obsessive, emotional abuse. Steinman explains:
It’s like Heathcliffe (sic) digging up Kathy’s [sic] corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight. You can’t get more extreme, operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. (Scott Rogers)
3. Hit the (Wuthering) heightsStill locally, Keighley News reports that Haworth school children were visited by the team behind the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
Everyone loves a birthday, and a 200th birthday is a very big birthday indeed. Step forward, then, the spirit of Emily Brontë - the second youngest of the Brontë siblings, and arguably the author of their finest literary offering in 1847's Wuthering Heights (devotees of Charlotte's Jane Eyre - feel free to leave an appalled comment below). Emily breathed her first on July 30 1818 - and will be the focus of bi-centennial celebrations throughout 2018 (see bronte.org.uk/bronte-200). One of the centrepoints will be the Parsonage Museum (bronte.org.uk; £8.50), the Bronte family home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, where Britain's most famous literary sisters lived and wrote. (Chris Leadbeater)
Haworth school children gained an insight into what goes into producing a film when they were visited by actors and the director of a new film in the making.
Year five children from Haworth Primary met Elisaveta Abrahall, director of the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, together with members of the cast.
Actors accompanying Elisaveta on the visit included Paul Eryk Atlas (playing the role of Heathcliff), Sha'ori Morris (Cathy), Richard Dee Roberts (Edgar Linton), Henry Douthwaite and Claire Cooper King (Mr and Mrs Earnshaw), Helen Fullerton (Ellen Dean), David Macey (Joseph) and Alex De Luca (Dr Kenneth).
This version of Wuthering Heights is due for international release in July next year, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë.
Filming for the final scenes for the movie has been taking place on the moors surrounding Haworth.
Haworth Primary head teacher Helen Thompson said: "It was a truly inspirational visit. The children asked a wealth of questions both about the characters in the film and about what it takes to make a film.
"Our children will be using the visit as a stimulus for their own writing about Heathcliff, which follows on from the work that the class did with the Brontë Parsonage earlier this term.
"We're incredibly grateful to the team for taking time out of their busy schedules to come and work with us."
During their time in Haworth the cast and crew of the new film were guests of the parsonage museum, where they conducted a photo shoot with their production's official unit photographer Keith Johnson to celebrate the end of filming.
The last frames of the film were shot in the snow at Top Withins on November 26.
All principle cast members were at the parsonage for the photo-shoot and to write a line for Clare Twomey's art project, Wuthering Heights – A Manuscript, which is creating a handwritten copy of Emily Brontë's famous novel.
Sha'ori Morris said: "It's been such a privilege to take part in what is the most iconic story of passion against the brutally beautiful backdrop of the moors.
"Seeing and working with it in the snow on our final day here was a unique and breath taking experience."
Elisaveta has promised a Haworth premiere of the film in August 2018 in conjunction with the 200-year celebratory events.
She said: "The film has been five years in the making in total with two years of filming. So to film the last day in Haworth seemed very apt.
"We've been overwhelmed by the support of the local community, and the kindness of the Brontë Parsonage and Bronte Society.
"We hope to do Emily's story justice with the most authentic version of it to date, and hope that a Haworth Premiere will go some way towards saying 'thank you' to the community and everyone who has so kindly given us their support."
Ponden Hall outside Stanbury, inspiration for Thrushcross Grange, also featured in the last day's film shoot.
Leading cast member Paul Atlas said: "I've spent two years walking in Heathcliff’s boots, and what a trek it has been!
"Filming on the moors here felt right. The warmth shown by the Brontë Society and the community in Haworth has been like an open hearth against the winter cold."
A while back, we posted about a paper on a fragment of Branwell's writing which had been found in New Zealand. There's an article about it on the University of Otago website.The first Brontë manuscript identified in New Zealand has been restored to its place in literary history thanks to a University of Otago researcher.This columnist from Meanjin Quarterly (Australia) writes about reading Jane Eyre for the first time.
The fragment of Branwell Brontë’s work was hiding in plain sight, misfiled as a letter, in the Heritage Collections of the Dunedin Public Library.
Coincidentally, the announcement of the previously unknown manuscript in Branwell’s hand occurred in the same year of the bicentenary of the writer’s birth. Branwell Brontë was born on 26 June 1817, and conferences and a special exhibition devoted to his life and work have been held in the United Kingdom this year. [...]
Dr Thomas McLean, of the University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics, and Dr Grace Moore, of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, researched Branwell’s life and work so they could properly explain the significance of the manuscript.
Their findings have just appeared in the Oxford University Press journal Notes & Queries.
They discovered the Dunedin fragment provides the ending for a story written by Branwell in 1837.
The pair pieced together Branwell’s microscopic handwriting, sometimes word-by-word, sometimes letter-by-letter,
and were able to place the fragment at the end of a scene in an inn, identified as part IV (i) of Angria and the Angrians.
Dr McLean visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, UK, in August this year and examined Branwell’s writing journal from which the page was taken.
"I could see exactly where our page fit. The fragment provides the finishing touches to the story,’’ he says.
They believe the piece may have become separated from the rest of the story because it is written on a slightly different sized piece of paper to the rest, as though it was an afterthought; it also bears a date eight weeks later than the chapter it concludes.
The rest of the story, which has already been published, survives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.
It is one of a collection of stories about the imaginary land of Angria that Branwell and Charlotte wrote about in their youth.
"Branwell would write one story, and then Charlotte would write the next. It was a kind of practice ground for the siblings, and it surely helped Charlotte refine the storytelling skills that would come together so remarkably in Jane Eyre.
"When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, its readers were astonished that a first novel could be so good. But the truth is, Charlotte and her siblings had been writing for each other for almost two decades before Jane Eyre appeared.
"The Dunedin fragment is, quite literally, a page from that remarkable history,’’ Dr McLean says.
The fragment is part of the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts held in the Heritage Collections of the library, with records showing it was purchased in 1928.
The collection is the work of businessman and publisher Alfred H. Reed, who died in 1975, and includes work by Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Gaskell and Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
Dr McLean says the collection also includes a clipped signature of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Branwell’s father, though its provenance is uncertain. The father’s signature took pride of place in one of Reed’s ornately decorated autograph albums, while the son’s manuscript languished in a folder, incorrectly catalogued as a letter.
The manuscript was displayed earlier this year in a University of Otago library exhibition, “Keeping it in the Family,” which examined famous British literary families.
It will remain at the Dunedin Public Library, though future publications of the story will need to include the Dunedin page.
"It’s incomplete without it. Any scholar working on Brontë juvenilia or on Branwell’s writings will want to know about it.’’
The fragment is also an "encouragement for more research’’, Dr McLean says. "There are other missing pages in the Brontë archives. So who knows what else is out there?’’
There’s a gap between my last couple of years in school and my time in university, a period during which my reading habits dropped down to the bare minimum: assigned texts. But one name on the list of recommended texts in my creative writing class caught my attention. Jane Eyre. Classics have never been my cup of tea, yet the premise of this Bronte novel intrigued me. Whether it was the feminist undertones, the independence of Jane, or the complicated romance, it was hard to tell. My tutor, a lovely woman who wore huge hoop earrings, helped me find a copy in the university library and said, ‘This is one of my favourites.’The Barry Gem features local author Vivien Freeman, whose
Jane Eyre brought about one of turning points in my young adult start. For a long time, I was prone to being easily flustered and aggressive. Maybe my Zoloft wasn’t working anymore, but anything stirred up a storm in my stomach. I’d finished class and was sitting on a mossy rock outside one of the art buildings when I saw an ex-friend I had fallen out with. My heart thundered in my chest, my palms were slippery with sweat as I contemplated whether to throw out an obnoxious insult or run. But I thought of Jane, of her resolve and strength, and I met his eyes. Our time throwing sand at each other on the beach, sharing clothes and food, making our Economics teacher laugh was gone. The flicker of recognition between us passed was swift. I turned back to my work and finished my coffee, edging his face out of my memory, off the cliff.
I don’t wish ill on him. If he broke a leg I might laugh. I haven’t seen him since that day. I don’t have any more memories to cast away. (Sofia Casanova)
inspiration for her novel [Rose Alleyn] stems from her deep appreciation of such authors as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier.The Guardian reviews a performance of Harry Christophers and his choir The Sixteen.
And there were new carols, too – a setting of Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Eve by Kim Porter, who is one of the altos in the Sixteen (actually 18 singers for each date of this tour), and the specially commissioned On Christmas Morn, by Marco Galvani, with its bell-like suspensions contrasting nicely with moments of introspection, using a text by Anne Brontë. (Andrew Clements)While The Stage reviews the play The Wolves of Willoughby Chase at Jack Studio Theatre, London and finds
echoes of Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett (Julia Rank)Vogue suggests giving a Jane Eyre t-shirt to your 'Newly Engaged Friend' because
As she embarks on her own marriage plot, remind her of some more well known ones. (Chloe Malle)Perhaps Jane Eyre is the one marriage plot she doesn't want to be reminded of right now, though.
Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. La única novela escrita por una de las afamadas hermanas Brontë, Emily, es una de la obras más aclamadas de la literatura romántica inglesa, donde las pasiones y los odios, a partes iguales, centran la trama protagonizada por el inolvidable Heathcliff. La obra ha sido llevada al cine en varias ocasiones. (Bea Guillén Torres) (Translation)Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are among the books you should read before you're 30 according to VNews (Italy). Captive Dreams Window has a post on Wuthering Heights.
The World Premiere ofThe Telegraph lists the TV highlights of the week:
The Art of Sisters: Tales & Letters by the Brontës
Adapted and Directed by Miriam Canfield
February 21st and 22nd, 7:30pm
$25 General Admission
American Irish Historical Center
991 5th Avenue
Having been exposed to the hardships of life from a young age, the Brontë sisters' fertile minds and soulful natures were apt to express their understanding of the human experience by creating extraordinarily, original stories. The Art of Sisters: Tales and Letters by the Brontës, delves into these sisters lives and reveals Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë's personal struggles as they faithfully persevered.
Featuring the talents of: Miriam Canfield, Alida Rose Delaney, Katrina Michaels, Rae Nelson, Stuart Rudin, and Marshall Taylor Thurman.
Musical Arrangement and Original Composition by Nathan Ben-Yehuda
Costume Design by Liz Altmann + Mekenna Hartwig
Produced by KALIDASCOPES Media & MirCan Productions
Graphics by Kim Hoeckle
Photography by Shannon Finnell
The Secret World of Emily BrontëChannel 4, December 29th, 6.05pmThe Times 2018 literary quiz has some Brontë questions:
Lily Cole came under fire for her appointment as creative partner to the Brontë Society for 2018, the bicentenary year of Emily Brontë’s birth. In this documentary, the Cambridge graduate and former model cannily uses Brontë’s life to show how the sexist expectations that fuelled such criticism were precisely what the writer herself tried to subvert. Cole travels a well-worn path to Brontë Country in Yorkshire, investigating Emily’s upbringing and the inspiration behind her 1847 masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Cole treks across Emily’s beloved moors, takes her own sister round the parsonage where the Brontës lived, and even interviews rock legend Patti Smith, who recently penned an introduction to Emily’s classic novel.
While the radical nature of Emily’s gender-busting achievement remains clear, Cole can’t rescue the facts of her life from their relative obscurity. Far more revealing, however, is Cole’s pet project – a short film that re-imagines the history of Heathcliff, the book’s foundling hero, from a modern perspective. It’s Cole’s work on this film that not only casts the brooding character in a whole new light, but also illuminates Emily’s own concerns afresh.
Jane Eyre (2011) ★★★★★
BBC One, January 2nd, 1.45pm
Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation respects Charlotte Brontë’s novel without following it blindly. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (as imposing as ever), put plenty of other Jane Eyre/Mr Rochester duets to shame; their performances are elevated by Moira Buffini’s excellent script. Fukunaga’s film is shot with masterly restraint and shorn of sentimentality. It would be hard to ask for more from Brontë on screen.
This year it was the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth. Which Brontë sister wrote which novel?Cathy Earnshaw meets Gabriel Oak in Otago Daily News (New Zealand) :
36 Jane Eyre
37 Villette
38 Wuthering Heights
39 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
40 And which one of the three was married?
The University Book Shop short story series brings you three stories in which local writers relocate famous fictional characters to Dunedin, and send them on twisted adventures. Today, Maria Ioannou follows Cathy on her search for a halfway decent Tinder date, as she spends time far from the madding crowd with Gabriel Oak.The Vindicator mentions a recent local concert:
Canfield Village Middle School’s seventh- and eighth-grade choirs, under the direction of Tom Scurich, performed their annual winter choir concert on Dec. 4.Jim McKewon's Likely Stories goes into his 2019 readings on KWBU:
The students performed to an auditorium packed with family and friends at Canfield High School. (...)
The seventh-grade choir opened the show with “Autumn Vesper,” by Emily Brontë and Audrey Snyder. (Abby Slanker)
To continue my study of the Brontës and Jane Austen, I finally got a copy of The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. I have a couple of pamphlets, but this is my fist time with their complete works.La Voz de Galicia (Spain) talks about a recent translation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women:
En Mujercitas, Alcott recogía la herencia de una época que ya había sido testigo de la Declaración de Sentimientos de Seneca Falls (1848, germen del sufragio femenino) y de personajes anteriores como Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) o algunas protagonistas de las novelas de Jane Austen. (Javier Armesto) (Translation)Télérama (France) describes the TV series The Miniaturist:
La série en tire quelque chose de proche du conte de fées, baigné dans une pénombre quasi fantastique qui rappelle l’œuvre d’Angela Carter (La Compagnie des loups), Rebecca de Daphne du Maurier ou Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. (Pierre Langlais) (Translation)L'Echo (Belgium) reviews a Paula Rego exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris:
Mais elle pourrait tout aussi bien être la fille naturelle de Goya et de Charlotte Brontë, du sarcasme ironique pour le premier au féminisme radical pour la seconde, reprenant son destin aux hommes comme Jane Eyre, son héroïne. (Xavier Flament) (Translation)Your Tango quotes 'sweet love quotes' (ahem) from Wuthering Heights; Jane Eyre's Library (in Spanish) posts about Penguin Australian edition of Jane Eyre. A couple of Brontë derivatives in the best reads 2018 list of Serena's Favorite Reads. Finally, a great post by What Rachel Wrote where she walks from Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, following the steps of the Brontës.
The form favours the wry; perhaps Toby Litt's faux-confessional 'My first proper girlfriend: Emily Brontë'.The Boston Globe publishes a moderately positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne (the book is also mentioned in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal):
If Jane Eyre is one of literature's most enduring heroines, then the unnamed narrator of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" is surely Eyre's modern successor, another innocent who enters the great house of the brooding master-husband. Yet the two novels are worlds apart; just look at their opening lines. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," du Maurier's fey narrator announces, whereas careful Jane begins by saying that "there was no possibility of taking a walk that day." Which woman would you trust, as witness or storyteller?The Sunday Mail talks about a possible new film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island produced by Douglas Rae who is also behind the Wuthering Heights's feature film project:
Du Maurier was reportedly drawn to the Brontës, and that connection is at the heart of Justine Picardie's engaging new novel, "Daphne," which opens with echoes of du Maurier herself: "To begin. Where to begin? To begin at the beginning, wherever that might be."
Picardie, a clever writer and diligent researcher, here tells two alternating stories. One narrative presents du Maurier in the 1950s, already famous, with a faltering marriage and a growing fascination with the Brontës, in particular Branwell, whose biography she is writing. The other story, set in present-day London, is narrated by an anonymous young innocent who has married a moody, divorced Henry James scholar. The new bride is uneasy in her master's gloomy house. Unlike Jane Eyre, however, this orphan is beautiful and a literature student, not a governess. She is also obsessed with du Maurier's novels and with the 1950s correspondence between du Maurier and Alex Symington, a self-styled Brontë expert.
In chapters that shuttle smoothly between past and present, Picardie takes us inside the minds of our unhappy modern heroine, of despairing du Maurier, and of the dishonest Symington. Through poems and letters, we even catch glimpses of Branwell. All of which - along with forgery, incest, mental breakdown, suicide, and affairs lesbian and heterosexual - could have been far too much. But Picardie, as she capably manages the intertwined plots, keeps our attention fixed on the two very different women. Attention is one thing, but affection another. Neither heroine ultimately engages our sympathies as did dreary little Jane or even tiresome Mrs. de Winter. ( Anna Mundow)
But before Treasure Island can set sail, Rae will launch another classic film, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.We read in The Independent's review of Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The woman and her legend how the biographer is a Brontëite:
He said: "We are planning a totally different interpretation as an international movie."(John Millar)
Bostridge has an evident sympathy with female subjects and a great sensitivity in writing about them. He has previously written a biography of Vera Brittain, and I remember him telling me once that in his teens he was "obsessed" with Charlotte Brontë. This sympathy dates back a long way, to a musical and literary upbringing he shared with his younger brother, the renowned tenor Ian Bostridge. (Suzi Feay)The Sunday Star Times (New Zealand) interviews Laura Hill, who plays the lead role in an upcoming Polly Teale's Jane Eyre production in Dunedin, New Zealand:
Jane Eyre is a "really big role", says Hill. "It's a classic role; it's going to be physically, vocally and technically demanding and I want to do a good job. I don't like doing things unless I do them well." (...)Today, The Times's Bookwise includes a question which will be quite easy for the readers of BrontëBlog. Who is she?
"Victorian novels? It was like, `oh come on'. But when I picked Jane Eyre up to read this year, I really enjoyed it."
The plot, says Hill, "is classic soap opera stuff". There's a class struggle, a horrible childhood at a boarding school, thwarted love and a mad woman in the attic, representing the repressed passion of Jane.
"Two sides of the same person. It's not necessarily a brand new idea, but in terms of the theatrical adaptation, it's a central conceit."
3 Ill treated by her guardian aunt, this orphan was sent to Lowood, a school for foundlings. She survived eight difficult years and the death of her close friend, rising to be first girl of the first class, then a teacher.Finally, the Czech blog Renčina červená knihovna continues publishing Brontë-related posts, the latest devoted to Anne Brontëová and an990 publishes a Polish translation (by the Polish poet Ludmiła Marjańska) of a poem by Emily Brontë.
Today, October 3, opens in Dunedin, New Zealand a new production of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre. The Fortune Theatre's production is part of the Otago Festival of the Arts. (Check previous posts for more information)JANE EYRECategories: Jane Eyre, Theatre
3–19 October 2008
Starring Laura Hill as Jane, Matt Hudson, Malcolm Murray, Anna Herare, Amy Tarleton, Sia Trokenheim, Amy Straker and Nathan Rimell.
The production is directed by David Lawrence.
Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre is one of the most popular English novels of all time. It is a great love story between Jane, the intelligent and pure young governess, and her worldly employer, Mr. Rochester. Complicating the possibility of romance is Rochester’s mad wife Bertha who is living in the attic.
A saga laced with oppression, suspense, horror, and passion, the story centres on Jane’s journey to free herself from the societal expectations of her day. Polly Teale’s adaptation for the stage, offers a new and dramatic look at this wonderful classic tale. It has now been staged around the world enthralling audiences and critics alike. It will be such a treat for Dunedin audiences to see this wonderfully dramatic retelling of a great classic.
Performance times:
Tuesday 6pm
Wed-Friday 7pm
Saturday 8pm
Sunday 4pm
School matinee performance: Wednesday October 15 at 11am
The Birmingham Rep has opened its big autumn show: a dramatisation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.3 News posts information about Jane Eyre in Dunedin, including a video interview with L
If Girl With A Pearl Earring is not focused enough, the snag here is the opposite.
Wuthering Heights is such a big story, demanding storm-ravaged bleakness, that a stage feels too safe a place to show it.
Elegant Susannah York is the best thing in this, her voice carrying better than those of younger actors.
She plays Nelly, the old family retainer who narrates the terrible tale of the Lintons and the plainly loopy Heathcliff (did Gordon Brown really mean to compare himself to this nasty piece of work?).
Balding Antony Byrne may be an established actor, but looks-wise he is no Heathcliff. What a disappointingly un-Byronic piece of trouser he makes.
I quite enjoyed the first half, but after the interval the show descends into increasing silliness. Sickly young Linton, for instance, is almost as camp as Julian Clary.
Edmund Kingsley's Hindley, the great rival of Heathcliff, does so much inaudible shouting he could have been one of the megaphone-wielding bores outside the Conservative Party conference which was happening next door this week.
Verdict: No shortage of madness
** (Quentin Letts)
aura Hill, who plays Jane Eyre. The video also shows images from the play (Picture source).The country house has long been the natural home of tales about mystery and mistaken identity. From the shadowy setting of The Turn of the Screw to the attics of Jane Eyre, the gloomy mansion of Sarah Waters's Fingersmith to the doomed grandeur of Kate Morton's The House at Riverton, a country residence is shorthand for a closeted world of secrets and lies. (Rebecca Armstrong)On the blogosphere, Cormorant Books interviews author Kathlyn Bradshaw:
Were there any specific books or movies, besides Frankenstein, that inspired you while writing the novel?Past and Present Intertwined comments on Mark Ryan's Wuthering Heights-inspired songs. And Wuthering Expectations writes about 'the Brontë family creative writing workshop'.
KB: Anything written at or around the time that Mary Shelley was writing was definitely helpful, but any stories with a gothic and/or mysterious setting were also useful, for instance, classics such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Movie and television adaptations of stories such as these helped in two ways. First, they provided visual and aural inspiration, and second, they too were derived from someone else’s novel.
Saucy Reading - Jane Eyre - City LibraryEDIT: More information in the Otago Daily Facts.
Join us for a free excerpt and meet the actors of Jane Eyre – one of the most popular English novels of all time. A great love story between Jane, the intelligent and pure young governess, and her worldly employer, Mr Rochester. Complicating the possibility of romance is Rochester’s mad wife Bertha who is living in the attic.
Thursday 25 September 12.30pm
Floor 1
Dunedin City Library
Event Venue 1st Floor, City Library
Event Starts 25/09/2008 12:30
Novel Marathon: 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily BronteCategories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre, Wuthering HeightsReynolds Hall, Westmont College955 La Paz RoadSanta Barbara, CA
Marathon reading of Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' sponsored by Westmont's English Department.
Saturday, 27 September, 2008
Starts at 09:00 AM
Audition NoticeAnd an alert from Petitcodiac, New Bruswick, Canada:
FORTUNE THEATRE TRUST
Thursday 12th June 2008
Location Dunedin
Fortune Theatre’s production of JANE EYRE by Charlotte Brontë
adapted for the stage by Polly Teale
Directed by David Lawrence
DUNEDIN - Fortune Theatre Studio
June 12
12 noon – 5pm
Production dates:
Rehearsals commence Monday September 8
Production opens on Friday October 3, Production closes Sunday October 19, 2008.
Jane Eyre is part of the Otago Festival of the Arts for the Fortune Theatre.
For a copy of the audition requirements, character breakdown and script, please contact Janice Marthen manager@fortunetheatre.co.nz
All information will be emailed to actors – hard copies are not available from the theatre.
Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Petitcodiac Public Library Book Clubs Adults Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Discover new authors while making new friends! The adult book club meets once a month on a Thursday evening to share ideas and opinions about a monthly book selection.
On Thursday, June 12th at 6:30 pm, we will be discussing Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Stop by the library to borrow a copy of the book if you need one.
This program is offered free of charge and no registration is required. For more information call the library at 756-3144.
They say every artist gives something of themselves to one of their creations, but Peter King has a different connection with his latest work.Step by step and not taking very seriously the asthma thing, the Brontë Society acknowledged an illegitimate daughter born from a Brontë sibling? Excuse me? The only thing here is the claim that Branwell Brontë may have fathered a daughter when he was tutor in the Lake District, which Juliet Barker dismisses in her biography The Brontës and then there's Phyllis Cheney, who claims that her great grandmother, Mary Ann Judson (b 1839) was the illegitimate child of Branwell Brontë and Martha Judson, from Haworth.
As head of design at Dunedin's Fortune Theatre, Mr King was charged with making the set for Wuthering Heights.
What made the experience special for him was his family link to the novel's author, Emily Bronte.
He is understood to be Bronte's great-great-great-grandson.
Emma Branwell, his great-great-grandmother, was thought to be an illegitimate Bronte child.
She married Thomas King and moved from England to New Zealand.
A fragment of a story by Charlotte Bronte, Emma, was about an illegitimate child and referred to people who settled far from their land of birth, and the Bronte Society of England acknowledged an illegitimate daughter was born to one of the Bronte siblings.
This "strange enigma" was discovered by Mr King's cousin about 20 years ago while she was putting together a family tree and relationships "got a bit tangled up".
He thought it was "quite cool" and "interesting" to be connected to such a well-known literary family.
While "none of us can write for nuts", many of his family shared Bronte ailments, including asthma. (Ellie Constantine)
A sneak preview from the Fortune Theatre.This Santa Rosa Press-Democrat article mentions afternoon tea and Emily Brontë:
The classic tortured love story of Heathcliff and Cathy adapted for stage with an ensemble cast.
Breathless, modern and sexy.
Join us afterward for light refreshments and an opportunity to mix with the cast.
* Thursday 1 April 12.30pm
* Ground Floor, City Library
* Free (Saucy Reading)
The roots of this meal, accurately known as afternoon tea, are in England, of course. I was, at the time, a graduate student of literature, reading Emily Bronte, D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy and I am certain that our afternoons mirrored a desire I had to merge into those well-loved books. (Michele Anna Jordan)The Bookseller announces a new edition of Wuthering Heights by White's Books that will be published next August:
White’s Books is publishing pocket-sized hardbacks of classic titles including Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island, featuring introductions from the likes of Ian Rankin and Jacqueline Wilson.We don't know if the new edition will have a new cover but the previous one was designed by Celia Birtwell, not by Joe McLaren. The Boston Bibliophile has a post about different Jane Eyre editions including White's Book's.
The publisher will release three Pocket Classics a month from August. The first books, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, are out on 4th August priced £6.99.
The books’ covers have been designed by Joe McLaren with embossed illustrations on the front and back. The titles feature coloured endpapers, decorated title pages, marker ribbons and new typsetting.
Each book will have a 2,000-word introduction by a contemporary author. The books will also contain a reader’s guide, providing background information about the book and its author, suggested discussion questions for book groups, recommended websites and further reading including titles that have been influenced by the classic. The reader’s guide has been created by Susan Osborne, book review editor of Waterstone’s Book Quarterly and author of Bloomsbury’s Essential Guide for Reading Groups.
Jon Jackson, publisher of White’s Books, said he selected contemporary authors to write introductions who were either influenced by the classic in question or loved the book. (Graeme Neill)
I had visited homes of famous writers, and found that exciting and rewarding — to step on the floorboards in Dickens’ house, and know he probably heard the same squeak — or to gaze out the upstairs nursery window in the Bronte parsonage, and see the moors as Charlotte, Emily, and Anne did. But the idea of visiting the great Claude Monet’s garden and home — actually seeing his inspiration and creation — seemed overwhelming. (Karen Kenyon)Hollywood Life uses Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights to spice up headlines:
R-Patz — You Look Hotter Than Heathcliff Filming Your New Movie ‘Bel Ami’!The Christian Science Monitor quotes Anne Brontë's poem The Narrow Way (April 1848) in an article about roses:
Forget Wuthering Heights! R-Patz’s sexiness is going to make his new movie Bel Ami hotter than hot! (Bonnie Fuller)
For instance, Anne Bronte wrote: “He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.” (Lynn Hunt)The actual stanza says:
To this journalist of The New Straits (Malaysia) the Twilight saga is not very interesting:On all her breezes borne
Earth yields no scents like those;
But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
Go watch the film. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (544 pages, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) So bad that it might have even ruined Wuthering Heights. Boring girl meets boring boy who turns out to be just a boring vampire.On the blogosphere. Posts about Wuthering Heights: on christinapomoni, The List! and Conspiração das Letras (in Portuguese). About Jane Eyre: My Literary Cannon Adventure, Feminist Mom in Montreal (who concentrates on the Lowood School). Finally, Hubpages has added a Haworth one.
Jane Eyre:An Autobiography
Dunedin Writers Festival - Fortune Theatre Studio
Friday 12 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Saturday 13 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Sunday 14 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Auckland Writers Festival
Tuesday 16 & Wednesday 17 at 2pm; Friday 19 at 10.30am; and Saturday 20 at 10.30am & 2.30pm.
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
50 Mayoral Drive, Auckland CBD
Sydney Writers Fesival
22-28 May, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Those who flocked to Dalloway (at DWRF 2015) will want to flock again to see Rebecca Vaughan in another one-woman show by Dyad Productions. Told through Jane Eyre’s eyes, Charlotte Brontë’s celebrated autobiographical novel shocked the Victorians with its gothic subversion of fairytale romance. Distilled for the stage by writer/director Elton Townend Jones and performed by Rebecca Vaughan (who plays Jane and several other characters), it’s been described by The Huffington Post as “Perfection... Vaughan is simply sublime.”
Jane Eyre is a pioneering work in the genre of the Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Charlotte Brontë introduces us to the resilient and independent Jane Eyre, an orphaned girl who endures a harsh childhood to become a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the enigmatic Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a deep and tumultuous romance. The novel explores themes of morality, religion, and social class, and is celebrated for its strong, complex heroine who asserts her sense of self in a restrictive society. (Girish Shukla)
4. Wuthering Heights by by Emily Brontë
Wutherig Heights is the first and only book of author Emily Brontë, it is a captivating tale of intense love and obsession set against the dramatic backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.
Emily Brontë's novel offers a unique blend of passion, mystery, and complex characters, making it a timeless classic that explores the darker sides of human nature and relationships. Its powerful storytelling and atmospheric setting will keep you intrigued from start to finish. (Shivangi Prajapati)
Wuthering Heights 1939Emily Brontë's sad, haunting 1847 tale of Heathcliff, his love for Catherine, and his inability to find true happiness, is brought to life on the big screen by Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
Hang on a minute. We did produce Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, Wordsworth, the Brontës: all capable of shaping a decent sentence or two. “Nineteenth century British literature is superb,” [Agnès] Poirier concedes, “but British music, painting and sculpture of that period look parochial.” (Kevin Maher, Laura Freeman, Johanna Thomas-Corr, Carol Midgley, Clive Davis, Will Hodgkinson, Debra Craine)
At this concert they featured songs from Molly Drake, mother of singer-songwriter and musician Nick Drake along with songs based on the words from the writings of the Brontë sisters.Todmorden, like Haworth, the home of the Brontës, is in Yorkshire’s Pennines. Somehow, the Unthanks’ style of almost minimalist music, with its intensity, piercing harmonies and sometimes off-kilter time changes seems at one with the local landscapes.
Although very little of it remains, the beautiful hamlet of Wycoller still has much to offer lovers of the English picturesque. Largely abandoned in the 19th century, when it was due to be flooded to make way for a reservoir, it now consists mostly of atmospheric ruins, including 16th-century Wycoller Hall which is thought to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Cath Pound)
Cuando tenía ocho años fue cautivada por un clásico: Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Aún conserva el ejemplar que tiene escrita la fecha y el nombre de quien se lo regaló. Lo recuerda así: "Una niña huérfana que vivía con una tía malvada, la mandan a un internado tremendo, luego trabaja como institutriz, pero nunca se victimizaba, al contrario. Una chica que se reinventaba todo el tiempo y nunca se daba por vencida. Este libro aparece en La Casita azul". Así, su propia obra homenajea a aquellas primeras lecturas. (Débora Campos) (Translation)
Come with me as I have a day out at the Bradford Literature Festival 2024 for their Brontë Day in the Midland Hotel. Spend the day with me getting my Brontë-themed stall ready and get a taste of the talks by distinguished authors and scholars on Anne Brontë and her other Brontë family members.
The second weekend of the festival, Friday to Sunday, July 21 to 23, will be devoted to celebrating Charlotte Brontë and her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls of Banagher. The programme includes three films, a tapestry and stitchcraft exhibition, three talks, two poetry readings and two heritage walks. Speakers and readers include Maebh O'Regan, Eileen Casey, Frances Browner, Joanne Wilcock, Michael O'Dowd, Kieran Keenaghan and James Scully. All events will be held in or start from The Crank House on lower Main Street. The events are free but donations will be most welcome. For full details go to the That Beats Banagher festival website in the highlights under culture and heritage.
Every July, fans all across the globe get together in various cities to dance and celebrate what's called The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.On Saturday, hundreds of dancers in red flowing frocks gathered at Sydney's inner city park to mimic the performer's unique choreography from her 1978 music video for Wuthering Heights.In the haunting video, Kate dances and sings in a red dress, with the track inspired by characters in Emile (sic) Brontë's classic 1847 novel of the same name.The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever celebrates the famous song worldwide in various places and coincides with Bush's birthday. (Ciara O'Loughlin)
NPORadio5 (Netherlands), Newcastle Herald and Stuff do the same for the Amsterdam, Newcastle and Dunedin events.
What does writing mean to you?Writing is one of the greatest inventions of humanity as it allows us to be able to record our experiences, knowledge, and creativity for posterity. Writing is the reason I could read about events that took place 2000 years ago in pre-Islamic Arabia through its poetry or enjoy a story created by Emily Brontë in mid-19th century England. It is what allows us to expand our minds beyond the scope of our immediate place, time, and reality.
Working with a sample of about 350 12- and 13-year-olds who were average or poor readers, the researchers had teachers read aloud “two whole challenging novels at a faster pace than usual.” (...)I’ve observed this phenomenon myself in other contexts, and I’ve heard about it from educators. I’ve seen teachers read aloud from engaging novels—even, on one occasion, the rather challenging Jane Eyre—and watched students of various ages become mesmerized. (Natalie Wexler)
Fat women in books are monstrous, comical and repulsive (Miss Trunchbull in Matilda); thin ones are saintly, beautiful and heroic (Miss Honey in the same book). This was even more true in the books I loved as a pre-teen, from Sweet Valley High to Jane Eyre. Fatness, like ugliness, has long been shorthand for authors, especially those writing for young people, to communicate: “This girl is bad.” But I learnt that message in other ways, too.
[Bernard] HerrmannSuite from Wuthering Heights; Echoes for Strings★★★★☆Keri Fuge (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Singapore Symphony Orchestra, cond Mario Venzago, Joshua TanChandosSynonymous with Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote some of the greatest and most audacious film scores in the history of Hollywood, Bernard Herrmann had many other strings to his bow. Among them was his opera, Wuthering Heights, inspired by a love for the novels of the Brontë sisters that began when he scored the 1943 screen adaptation of Jane Eyre. The challenge for the listener is in drawing a dividing line between Herrmann’s works for cinema and those he wrote with his other hats on, and Hans Sorensen’s suite of excerpts, and the performances of it here, makes that at once straightforward and complicated. The first scene of Act I, with writing for orchestra and soloists that is alternately astringent and blowsy, is a case in point. The orchestration is astonishingly rich and nuanced, but it is, yes, also inescapably cinematic. The same goes for Echoes for Strings, beautiful and persuasive though the piece is. No matter, this accomplished recording is a deeply rewarding listen. (Dan Cairns)
Gabi Bergman: Do you have a favourite song or moment from this show?B.R.: Not at the moment, because there are so many that I’m really learning and learning to love. Miley I’m enjoying singing… As Streisand I sing Sondheim’s “Being Alive”, which I’ve never sung before. Kate Bush is another I’m just really enjoying – I sing “Wuthering Heights”, of course, but also “Running Up That Hill”… and it’s been fun learning those ones.
Unless explicitly said
