Directed by Alex HuntWritten by Oliver Draiv (among others, we guess)Produced by Phil Viardo, Jeremy Gilbreath (supervising) and Vlad Kumurzhi (associated).Photographed by Eugnee FilsonWith: Jean Evans (Cathy Earnshaw), Dante Ayala (Eddie Linton), Ehan Vaughan (Heathcliff Earnshaw), Gabriel Quintella (Hindley Earnshaw), Maia Sky (Bella Linton), Lane Wray (Patrick Earnshaw), Sofia Shakarian (Young Cathy), Jameson Barros (Young Heathcliff), Jax Binkert (Young Hindley).
Jane EyreWe wonder who this Father Jameson may be.
Directed by Jerry Bradford
Written by ???
Produced by Phil Viardo, Alex Hunt (executive), Jeremy Gilbreath (supervising) and Vlad Kumurzhi (associated).
Photographed by Benjamin Mahl
With Raina Silver (Jane Eyre), Tyler Harlow (as Edward Rochester), Eric Roberts (as Father Jameson), Alana Tilton (Bertha), Esmeree Sterling (Georgiana), Derek McDonnell (Richard Mason), Emily Lisa Jones (Blanche Ingram), Yva Leroy (Adele),
The classics got hotter. Vertical dramas from stories you already love. Open the app. For the plot.
A celebration of 'collective joy and creativity' inspired by Emily Brontë and Kate Bush will feature as part of Bradford 2025's UK City of Culture programme.Wondering Heights invites everyone to join a free, playful celebrationInspired by Emily Brontë's imagination and Kate Bush's pop anthem 'Wuthering Heights', the event seeks to engage people from all walks of life in a simultaneous celebration of place, dance, and song.People can participate from anywhere they choose - whether at home, in the workplace, or amidst the rugged beauty of the Bradford moors.Wondering Heights is described as a 'tiny project with a big hopeful heart' focuses on togetherness through activities like walking, dancing, drawing, or simply imagining.There will be two free workshops for people to learn the Kate Bush-inspired dance routines on July 5 and July 23.The event encourages everyone to participate in their own creative way, be it dancing, drawing, waving a dramatic tea towel, or walking one of the mapped routes.Artist Lucy Barker is the brain behind Wondering Heights.The project aims to welcome everyone to create and share their own moments of 'collective effervescence', a term defined by modern sociologists to signify the joy of moving or feeling together.Routes on the event map include Lucy's Dream, starting near Denholme Gate, Thornton Village, Ogden Water, and Denholme.Full access guides are available for select routes on Lucy Barker's website.The Wondering Heights map, designed by Chris Goddard, is available online or in limited-edition risograph print form at venues, including the Bradford 2025 Ticket Office, The Brontë Parsonage Museum Reception, and South Square Centre Café.The map can be used as a guide for a walk on the moors, a prompt for a dance, or a 'spark for something entirely your own'.When finished with it people can recycle it, pass it on, or repurpose it creatively.The event is free to participate in and encourages everyone to share their creative responses on social media using a QR link or by tagging Lucy Barker on Instagram.The initiative is said to be inspired by the words of Priya Parker, from 'The Art of Gathering', who said: "Gatherings have the power to temporarily transport us to a world created for a specific purpose—where we feel we belong to something larger than ourselves."For more information, visit Lucy Barker's website or follow her on Instagram. (Gavin Engelbrecht)
From the outside, this modest stone cottage in England looks like the perfect escape for those seeking peace and quiet.But the house is next door to a world-famous tourist site that attracts 70,000 people each year.The Brontë Parsonage, located just 50 metres down the road, is a magnet for literary tourists.It is here that Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë penned some of English literature’s most famous works, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.In their day, the Yorkshire village of Haworth was a grim place where sewage flowed down the streets and sanitation was poor.It was also a time when the average life expectancy in the village was just 25.Today, Haworth is a peaceful country town with a bustling tourist trade.There are two one-bedroom cottages, one two-bedroom cottage and a small studio on offer.The cluster of buildings will go to auction at the end of July with a guide price of £350,000 ($732,000).The listing by SDL Property Auctions suggests the cottages could be used as holiday accommodation.“The building would lend itself to Airbnb or could potentially be redesigned, internally, to accommodate any number of functions, i.e. guest house,” the listing reads.“This is all subject to the necessary consent.”The cottages are ideally positioned between two of the town’s biggest tourist sites: the house where the Brontë sisters lived and the church where their father preached.The idyllic ivy-covered buildings have traditional stone walls, chimneys and mullioned windows.Three of the four cottages are currently rented out to private tenants, while the other is vacant. (Orana Durney-Benson)
Pupils from across the Castleford Academy Trust held their annual arts showcase in June, taking inspiration from local figures such as Barbara Hepworth, Charlotte Brontë, and Simon Armitage to create Yorkshire-themed poetry, catwalks, singing, visual art and physical theatre. (Catherine Gannon)
A Book of Ryhmes by Charlotte BrontëNearly 200 years since the then 13-year-old Charlotte Brontë handwrote her miniature book in Decembe 1829, A Book of Ryhmes [sic] has been published for the first time by The Brontë Society and Tartarus Press, an anthology of 10 transcibed poems (including The Beauty of Nature and On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel) with a foreword by singer Patti Smith. The original manuscript was bought by the Friends of the National Libraries in 2022 at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair and donated to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth where it was originally written.
A cash-strapped local authority is planning to offload more of its assets in order to bring in £6m.Kirklees Council was faced with a £47m black hole in its budget in 2023-24.The authority has already raised nearly £1m after four assets were sold off in May and June.Seventeen new assets have been earmarked for disposal including a plot of land at Grasscroft in Almondbury, despite several objections. [...]It has already auctioned off of the former Red House Museum at Gomersal, which sold for £650,000.The Grade II listed property, which was once the home of Charlotte Brontë's friend Mary Taylor, was previously a museum which closed in 2016 and a plan to turn it into holiday accommodation and wedding venue fell through. (Abigail Marlow)
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë‘Jane Eyre’ remains a timeless exploration of emotional strength, morality, and self-worth. Through Jane’s voice, Charlotte Brontë crafts a narrative that merges gothic drama with a profound inner journey. Jane’s resilience in the face of abuse, neglect, and heartbreak reflects a fiercely independent spirit determined to define her own value. Benedict Cumberbatch has expressed admiration for the character’s emotional depth and the novel’s enduring relevance. As someone who often portrays psychologically rich roles, it’s clear why he would be drawn to such a work.
There were several dance routines, which were very varied, almost none of which were appropriate for the Austen era and which made the scenes even more humorous. The cast were clearly well rehearsed in what superficially were chaotic scenes. In Sense and Sensibility, Emily and JR danced to Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights before Rosie pointed out that was by Emily Brontë, not Jane Austen. (Charles Essex)
A Book of Ryhmes was produced by Charlotte when she was just 13 years old.The original, handwritten work is smaller than a playing card, with a brown paper cover, and is dated December, 1829.It was the last Charlotte Brontë miniature manuscript book known to be in private hands before it was bought by the Friends of the National Libraries in 2022, at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair.The book was then donated to the Brontë Society’s parsonage museum at Haworth, where it was originally written when the building was the family home of the literary siblings.Now the work has been carefully transcribed and published as a hardback anthology of 10 poems, including The Beauty of Nature and On Seeing the Ruins of the Tower of Babel.It also features images of Charlotte’s original manuscript and essays by Barbara Heritage – associate director of the Rare Book School – and bookseller Henry Wessells, who worked on the acquisition in 2022.A foreword has been written by Patti Smith – a singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author and photographer.She says: "Though written nearly 200 years ago, the book has maintained the freshness of youth. It is not simply a handful of juvenile verses, but the manifestation of an ambitious dreamer."The Brontë Society partnered with independent Yorkshire publisher Tartarus Press on the project.Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, says: "When Charlotte created the original collection of these poems, she inscribed it as being ‘Sold by Nobody, and Printed by Herself’. How thrilled she would be – as we are – that so many years later, it has been published and is now available so anyone can have their own copy; it has been a very special way for us to mark the 209th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth." [...]The original A Book of Ryhmes is on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. (Alistair Shand)
She sits writing at the kitchen table as the surrounding countryside is assaulted with heavy wind and rain. Beyond her home, a bleak parsonage is the overcrowded village of Haworth, close neighbour of the industrial sprawl of Keighley. The unsanitary village is a place of suffering and disease, where life expectancy is low, and half the children die before the age of six.Yet on 26 October 1829, 13-year-old Charlotte Brontë wrote nothing of this. Nothing of the horrendous odours. Nothing of the empty cupboards, the endless chores. Nothing of the deaths of her elder sisters and mother. Nothing of the fear of losing her father, who had agonised for months with a lung ailment. Instead, on tiny, precious scraps of paper, she composed a contemplative hymn to beauty. Seeking to define it, despite cruel circumstances, she takes a mental stroll in a welcoming forest where the elements blossom in perfect harmony. Then as the revelation of nature’s beauty dissipates, she resorts to the burgeoning terrain of her own imagination.Charlotte channels the reflections of one of her own characters, striding through a Canadian forest. Through him, she portrays with mysterious accuracy, the majesty of the great trees that rise like the masts of tall ships. In late November she unpredictably re-imagines the time of Babel, expanding the Genesis tale. Wrestling with an unbridled passion for words she evokes the atmosphere and those doomed souls attempting to pierce the whereabouts of God with the construction of a forbidden tower.Her description, mixing the unexpected with the prosaic, suggests panels of the Babel tower painted by Bruegel. Suddenly she drops down to Earth and offers a quiet, lucid little piece, 14 lines that she identifies as a sonnet. She heralds the magnificence of nature yet reminds us of the jewels of the seemingly commonplace. “Lovely is the bright rainbow but lovelier still the swan’s neck of snow.” Simplicity so acutely articulated, it brought me to tears.I was privileged to personally view this tiny miracle, Charlotte’s chapbook, on her birthday. Though written nearly 200 years ago, it has maintained the freshness of youth. It is not simply a handful of juvenile verses, but the manifestation of an ambitious dreamer. The sight of it spun me into the realm of my own childhood.Like Charlotte, I was the oldest and could often be found scribbling little stories to amuse my younger siblings. I could access that feeling, when solitude surges into a thousand visions, coupled with the unspoken desire to one day create books read by others. Though I had neither her vocabulary nor precocious literary skills, I recognised the energy, the concentration, the power of invention that a young writer wields as a benevolent weapon.The Brontë siblings created worlds filled with heroes and produced strange maps of new lands known only to them. Collectively and feverishly the four sat at the wooden kitchen table, constructing their own Game of Thrones. But in 1829, from October to December, Charlotte was compelled to create her solitary effort.Again, I picture her sitting, the parsonage bleak, the night ominous, warmed by her own creative impulse. In the last precious scraps, she returns to the rich tapestry of her boundless imagination. In the centre of December, with frost obscuring the view, and the wild wind causing the heart to tremble she writes of dead winter mystically transformed. But Charlotte, as if rudely awakened from her own spell, produces her last words in “Autumn Song”, stunned by the reality of the harshness of decay, nature’s waning day.How amazing the scope of the mind of this adolescent girl who would later pen the classic Jane Eyre and the masterpiece Villette at that same wood kitchen table. She possessed the rare ability to open herself to the darker elements and transform them. For through all loss and hardship, she forever harboured the secret knowledge of her own powers, that at 13 she laboured to nourish and express in the tiny Book of Ryhmes, Charlotte’s young season.Today, almost two centuries after it was written by then 13-year-old Charlotte Brontë, ‘A Book of Ryhmes’ will be published for the first time. The hardback anthology of 10 poems has been carefully transcribed and is accompanied by a foreword by legendary singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author and photographer, Patti Smith. The original book is on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the new publication is available to buy from www.bronteshop.org.uk
The Brontës by Anita Rani: Sisters of Disruption will look at the influence of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë on readers over the years - including Anita Rani herself.The programme is partly autobiographical, tracing Rani's relationship with the Brontës as she returns to her hometown of Bradford.She recalls her first encounter with the sisters at school and her experience of growing up with the landscape of Haworth and the moors on her doorstep.Rani also meets fellow Brontë fans and literary experts to discuss how and why these sisters became ground-breaking 'literary disruptors' (in the words of a spokesperson), whose work still feels relevant and influential today.Executive producer Mark Robinson said: "The legacy of the astounding work of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë continues to reverberate around the world - they were challenging the patriarchy two hundred years ago."The worlds the sisters created have influenced culture across the centuries - from Kate Bush to Taylor Swift, Game of Thrones to Saltburn."As well as looking at how they inspired her, Anita will also discover just what made them so subversive – and very different to the timid image so frequently associated with them."Rani said: "These strong, unearthly sisters fed into my psyche and made me think anything was possible."I related to the darkness and tragedy in the Brontës’ lives...they had as much impact on me as Neneh Cherry, The Smiths, and Goldie."In this film I’m going to explore how these women - so full of rage - changed my life, and the world."Growing up, romance wasn’t on the cards."Bollywood felt distant."But Heathcliff...well, he could have been Indian - dark hair, dark features...why would he not be?"Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and Sky Arts have announced a free screening of the programme on May 7 as part of the Creative Cities Convention.This will be followed by a panel discussion with Rani and Shanaz Gulzar, creative director of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.The programme will then be available to watch on Sky Arts, Freeview, and streaming platform NOW from May 20.Tickets for the free screening, which will take place at Pictureville Cinema, are available at https://my.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/0/413178The free screening event begins at 7pm, with a 6.30pm arrival time. (Will Abbott)
Her parents, whose marriage she fictionalized in “Act of Will” (1986), supported Barbara’s early desire to write, buying her a typewriter when she was 10 and introducing her to literature, opera and the theater. As a teenager, she read Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy and the French novelist Colette. (Robert D. McFadden)
Her original manuscripts are archived in Leeds University’s Brotherton Library, beside those of the Brontë sisters, whose books Taylor Bradford read as a child. (Casey Cooper-Fiske)
Literary enthusiasts will find Hathersage particularly enchanting, as it houses North Lees Hall, the inspiration for Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre'. (Phoebe Cornish and Isobel Pankhurst)
5. West Yorkshire: HaworthHaworth, forever tied to the Brontë sisters, inspired canonical novels like Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The village’s cobbled streets preserve its 19th-century grace while its stone-built houses, often constructed from locally quarried gritstone, give the buildings their distinct earthy hue. The neighbouring South Pennine moors – central to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – feature wild moors, which in summer are painted purple and green by blooming heather and bilberry. (Sam Long)
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. (...)Also in the New York Times a selection of audiobooks classics read by women:
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)
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. (...)Diane Fare's column in Keighley News summarizes a very intense week at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
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)
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.The Little Book's auction appears also in Smithsonian Magazine, L'Est Républicain (France), Politik (Greece), Eidiseis (Greece), El Economista (México)...
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.
My favourite author or bookThe Guardian reviews some recent crime novels:
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 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 HeightsA mention to Wuthering Heights in The Globe and Mail Book Club:
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)
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:
BrontëWhy do teachers make us read old stories? in IOL (SouthAfrica):
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)
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.Art Tribune (Italy) reviews the graphic novel Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna & Ramón K. Pérez:
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)
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.
Kirklees Council says “conversations are ongoing” over the future of the site in Gomersal following enquiries from what it describes as “interested parties”.We hope that he means it and that it is true, but to us, it does sound like they will sell it in the end as they have always meant to do.
And campaigners fighting to stop parts of the site from being turned into housing have been assured that no final decision will be taken until all potential opportunities to retain the building have been exhausted.
The revelation came after supporters in Huddersfield Town Hall presented a petition calling for the museum, which has connections to Charlotte Brontë, to be given over to the Red House Heritage Group.
Kirklees Council closed Red House almost three years ago as part of a reaction to Government austerity cuts.
It turned down three asset transfer requests and announced in September this year that the building and grounds were to be put on the market.
In a hard-hitting and impassioned address Caroline Goodwill exhorted members to stand up for people who had signed the petition – and who wanted action on the former museum.
She said: “We are not expecting you to reopen Red House but we the Red House Heritage Group wish to take it over in some form or another and work with Kirklees to save and develop this wonderful heritage resource.”
She referred to the 17th century house as “a perfect time capsule” that demonstrated how the Industrial Revolution had happened and underlined the importance of the wool trade to the borough.
She also underlined Red House’s connections to Charlotte Brontë, calling it the second most important Brontë site globally after the family parsonage in Haworth.
She added: “In case you haven’t noticed, the world is Brontë mad.
“Would another five or six houses on the Red House site make such an important difference to the housing stock? Is it worth destroying this national and international site?”
For the council Clr Graham Turner said the decision to close Red House had been very difficult.
Three applications for the museum to be the subject of a community asset transfer missed the relevant criteria to move forward – one by just a single point. All were rejected.
But he pledged to look closely at any new bids.
“I will promise you this evening that we will not sell the building until we have exhausted all the potential opportunities to either retain the building without a large subsidy or complete a successful asset transfer, or by it being taken over by an alternative charity or public body.
“Any positive outcome can only be achieved if any interested parties talk to us.” (Tony Earnshaw)
Councillor Rebecca Poulsen (Cons, Worth Valley) was referring to concerns that the town's library might face the chop under planned £1.05 million cuts to Bradford's Museum and Library service.And now for something constructive (as opposed to the destruction above) as Keighley News reports that a bridge over the River Worth has been rebuilt after 35 years.
The Council announced the cuts earlier this year, and is soon to start a public consultation into how the cuts will impact services.
Officers have said the Council aims to keep all its libraries and museums open, but the budget cuts would require major changes to the way they operate.
In Keighley concerns had been raised that the town would lose its Carnegie library after a number of online rumours. The Council has proposed the facility on North Street could become a community hub - retaining the library service and including other services and facilities.
Cllr Poulson represents Haworth, where the Brontë sisters wrote their most famous works, and on Tuesday raised a motion calling for greater protection of the District's libraries.
She said: "It would be a disgrace, it would degrade Keighley in the eyes of the world, if there was no library in a town just three miles down the road from where so many famous novels were written." (Chris Young)
It lies just below Ponden Reservoir, with the source of the River Worth only a few hundred yards past Ponden Hall at the top side of the reservoir.On the other side of the Atlantic, there are a couple of reviews of The Joffrey Ballet's take on Jane Eyre with Cathy Marston's choreography.
[Ponden Hall owner Richard Trainer] said there had been a bridge at the site for many years, and he and Barbara had long planned to revive the crossing.
He said: “When Barbara’s sister died in February we thought the bridge would make a suitable memorial.
“It’s on all the old maps. In the old days, workers would go across the bridge to get to the mill. They used to have a vegetable patch on the other side.
“The bridge fell down about 35 years ago and was never repaired. I think when Ponden Hall became a shop they didn’t want people playing on a rickety old bridge.
Richard said the bridge had attracted a lot of interest in recent weeks.
He added: “It’s a nice addition to what we have here. We have a campsite, bed-and-breakfast, and we have a café that’s open four days a week.
“We have parking at the mill and we are the closest to one of the Brontë sites, so we get a lot of people coming for walks. The bridge gives them another place to go for a walk.
“The bridge leads to a picnic area. It’s quite popular – stable and childproof. Children are often playing and collecting things along the river.” (David Knights)
Among the great pleasures of 19th-century novels are their length, their breadth, the deep dives into characters’ lives and into the social fabric of the time. It’s almost suicidal to try to stage these stories in just over two hours. Yet that’s what British choreographer Cathy Marston did with Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 Jane Eyre, in a 2016 evening-length ballet now remounted by the Joffrey at the Auditorium Theatre. It’s an act of love, and of daring—for good and bad, a contemporary feminist take on the story.
Eliminating all traces of costume drama, Marston emphasizes the novel’s bleak universality. Patrick Kinmonth’s painted drops show sloping, intersecting lines suggesting lonely hills, the moors, a distant horizon on a vast open plain. His pared costumes merely hint at the period. Philip Feeney’s score likewise defers to the choreography, as Marston steps outside the bounds of classical ballet to highlight the characters’ distinctive gestures. [...]
Emotionally, Jane is already evolved enough to interact with Rochester on equal terms. In their first duet, they’re clearly dancing one of the novel’s bantering, witty, occasionally combative early conversations. Every subsequent duet fully limns a new phase. When Jane saves Rochester’s life, pulling him from his burning bed, and they dance in their nightclothes, there’s a huge jump in intimacy: intellectual attraction has become fiery desire. The highly athletic, technically difficult proposal scene, near the top of the second act, feels artificial, forced—maybe because Rochester already has a wife: Bertha, the mad Creole in the attic. When Jane, about to be married, finds out about Bertha and tosses her bridal veil aside like the rag it is, their duet is marked by distance and avoidance.
Though the early duets in the second act falter, and the story of Jane’s would-be husband, St. John Rivers, feels cursory, dutiful, Marston returns to form in the final duet, when Rochester’s blindness completely changes the power dynamic between him and Jane. Just before the quiet end, Marston inflects Jane’s usual isolating, self-protective gesture—clasping her own chest or head—to suggest the mutual support between these two. When she stands with her back to Rochester, touching once again her hands to her face, he takes one of them in his and places her other behind his neck, forming a loop, a never-ending circuit of love.
While Marston pretty much nails the love story, her sometimes heavy-handed treatment of the novel’s feminism, embodied in the literal manhandling of Jane by the ten characters she calls the D-Men, comes perilously close to tiresome, their scenes continually hammering home Jane’s victimization. Predictably, she’s a rag doll in their hands at first but increasingly defies them, finally trouncing them all—one by one, action-heroine style—in an unsurprising final confrontation.
A bigger problem, especially since Marston emphasizes Brontë’s feminism, is her treatment of Bertha, who has her own story of abuse by men, a story Jean Rhys tells in her 1966 novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys not only imagines Rochester’s cruelty to Bertha—a cruelty visible but unacknowledged onstage here—but exposes its source in imperialist, racist beliefs. A baked-in problem, Bertha (Christine Rocas, excellent on opening night) is simply a monster here, as usual. If you’re going to be a feminist, care for all women.
Marston’s feminism feels most genuine when she celebrates female friendship in duets and trios that comfort Jane, give her a community. On opening night, Lucia Connolly danced the dithery, skittery Mrs. Fairfax to perfection, as Cara Marie Gary did the hyperkinetic Adele. As Young Jane, Yumi Kanazawa was touchingly vulnerable and defiantly strong. Greig Matthews made a great moody Rochester, but his partnering of Amanda Assucena’s Jane made me fear for her safety. She brought precise technique and fearless flamboyance to bear on a Jane powerful in every scene, whether standing silently watching or dancing her heart out. (Laura Molzahn on Chicago Reader)
It unfolds as something of a fever dream as Jane (with a sublime performance by Amanda Assucena), envisions her younger self (exquisitely danced by Yumi Kanazawa, who clearly has star quality), and recalls her lonely, abusive childhood as an orphan. Grudgingly taken in by her haughty aunt (played to perfection by April Daly), she is battered and bullied by her spoiled cousins (the excellent Xavier Nunez, Yuma Iwai and Valerie Chaykina), and then sent off to a Dickensian boarding school for orphaned girls (ideally conjured with nothing but wooden stools and slates). Her only friend is Helen Burns (a lovely turn by Brooke Linford), but she soon dies. It is only when she begins to teach the girls that she begins to gain the confidence that will serve her well.An English teacher who hates the classics on Book Riot:
Then comes a life-altering transition as Janes takes the job of governess at the home of Edward Rochester (wonderfully danced and played by Greig Matthews in what is unquestionably a breakthrough performance), the wealthy, worldly, darkly brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
Jane is welcomed by Mr. Rochester’s kind but perpetually nervous housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (a spot-on turn by Lucia Connolly). And she is instantly adored by her exuberant little pupil, Adele Varens (an irresistibly playful Cara Marie Gary), who is Rochester’s ward. As for Rochester, who has some very dark secrets hidden in his closet, he is initially quite dismissive of Jane. (In one searing gesture made while seated in a giant armchair, he sharply extends his leg as if to corral her.) But gradually he begins to realize she is a woman with a steely spine. And not only does a certain push-pull chemistry between the two begin to develop, but he also even fends off the insistently seductive moves of the socialite Blanche (beautiful Jeraldine Mendoza), and proposes marriage to Jane instead.
Of course there is no escaping that dark secret: a wife, Bertha Mason (in a riveting, crash-and-burn turn by Christine Rocas), a raging madwoman with suicidal impulses who is kept locked away in an attic room and is cared for by the harried and notably tipsy Grace Poole (an inspired cameo by Dara Holmes). Once that story is revealed, a traumatized Jane runs away into the moors where she is rescued by the Rev. St. John Rivers (the always outstanding Edson Barbosa), who quickly proposes marriage – an offer she instantly rejects, knowing that Rochester is the man who has captured her soul, and that she must return to him.
Bertha’s attempt to burn the house down leaves the madwoman dead and Rochester blind. But Jane is determined to live out her life with him, and the remarkably moving pas de deux that reunites them suggests they are finally clearly “seeing” each other in the most compelling way.
Throughout, Assucena’s dancing is sweeping and flawless, including when she is haunted by memories of being bullied by a group of men in creamy topcoats who torment her and toss her from one to the other with terrifying force until she finally learns to fight back. But it is the easy radiance and complexity of Assucena’s inner life, and the most natural ways in which she embodies Jane’s growth and change and ever-shifting confidence, anguish and confusion, that make the crucial difference. And she and Greig make a most interesting pair.
Marston’s character-defining choreography and dramatic direction give each of the many other dancers in the ballet a highly specific language of movement, and without exception they have become fluent in it, suggesting both the inner psychological landscape and the outer reality. (Note: Three casts will alternate in the leading roles during the ballet’s two-week run, including Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels, and Anais Buenos and Dylan Gutierrez.)
The sets and costumes by Patrick Kinmonth (who also collaborated with Marston on the ballet’s scenario) are spare but highly effective, with delicately painted curtains to suggest the landscape, and little more than chairs used as defensive weapons and seats of power (or the lack of it).
And as always, music director Scott Speck and his impeccable Chicago Philharmonic musicians are essential in bringing the work to vivid life and ideally synchronizing with the dancers. (Hedy Weiss on WTTW News)
Similarly, the feminist in me just cannot with Wuthering Heights. I often see this hailed as one of the most romantic books all the time. Eye roll. What is romantic about this book? Heathcliff is deeply troubled and abusive. Cathy is simpering and weak. There’s also something a bit incestuous about the vibe. Is that the definition of romance we want to instill in the next generation? (Lily Dunn)And yet according to Aspen Daily News, Wuthering Heights is not a classic or a romance but a thriller (!).
Thrillers with female heroines are hardly an emerging area in fiction (think “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Brontë), but in the last several years — with the publications of the bestselling “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn in 2012 and “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins in 2015 — it has reclaimed book publishing. (Maura Masters)Sin embargo (Mexico) features the group Libros B4 Tipos formed by 14 booktubers.
Andrea hace breves intervenciones para hablar de autoras. Su recomendación tiene nombres conocidos como Jane Austen o las hermanas Brontë (Emily, Charlotte y Anne), sin embargo, asegura que a pesar de ser clásicas es necesario seguir leyéndolas porque durante siglos han permanecido relegadas por el género que escribieron.La opinión de Málaga (Spain) reviews the translated poems of Emily Brontë.
“Debemos rescatar, por ejemplo, a Jane Austen que siempre la he visto relegada porque creen que solo escribe cosas románticas como si eso fuera un género menor, igual que las Brontë. Porque todas ellas en su tiempo rompieron los esquemas. Necesitamos rescatar a las autoras clásicas y no relegar a escritoras de novelas románticas cuando no es un género menor o algo exclusivo de mujeres“, explica Andrea. (Patricia Ramírez) (Translation)
Es esta 'Poesía completa' una oportunidad de descubrir a una autora que supo llegar con sus palabras a los rincones más profundos del alma humana, aquellos en los que se esconden los sentimientos que no queremos compartir, las zozobras que nos atormentan cuando amamos, cuando quieres y no te quieren, cuando la felicidad es un anhelo que está a la vez tan lejos pero tan cerca.La casa de El (Spain) finds echoes of the Brontës and Jane 'Austin' (sic) in the graphic novel The Black Holes by Borja González.
Un universo propio es el que construye Emily Brontë en sus poemas, un mundo que se pasea por ese otro mundo imaginario, Gondal, que un día se inventó con sus hermanas. En la poesía de Emily hay no sólo amor y sentimientos, también se encuentran esos otros elementos tan comunes en la escritura surgida de las islas británicas, una naturaleza bronca, desafiante, convertida en metáfora de los miedos propios y ajenos, pero a la vez florida, verde, exhuberante, como la tierra nutrida por la lluvia. Es el petricor, ese olor único a tierra mojada que es a la vez fin e inicio. Mujer adelantada a su época, como sus hermanas, nunca es tarde para descubrir su poesía, lectura otoñal para recordar a una autora difícil de igualar. (Virginia Guzmán) (Translation)
‘The Black Holes’ mezcla con acierto el ruidoso espíritu punk con la ciencia ficción, el relato gótico heredero de las hermanas Brontë y la elegancia victoriana de fuerte espíritu femenino que podría estar ideada por Jane Austin. (Santiago Negro) (Translation)The London Economic carries the story of 'two unrelated students called Bronte Taylor, born one day apart, graduated from the same English Literature course this week'. The accompanying picture shows them both holding a Penguin Books edition of Wuthering Heights. El País (Spain) recommends Adrienne Rich's reading of Charlotte Brontë's works. The Univerity News has just discovered Diane Setterfield's 2006 novel The Thirteenth Tale and recommends it will ' charm your “Jane Eyre”-loving hearts.'
The five year Brontë200 bicentenary commemorations continue at the Parsonage Museum in Haworth with this year’s celebrations focussing on the life and work of Patrick. Poet, curate, social campaigner and father to the famous literary siblings, Brontë’s legacy is profound and wide-ranging, so it will be interesting to see the programme of the events when it is revealed in the next few weeks. (Yvette Huddleston)Barbara Taylor Bradford's favourite books in Reader's Digest UK:
Wuthering HeightsChurch Times reviews the book God and the Gothic, by Alison Milbank:
I first read this when I was about ten, and was captivated by Catherine and Heathcliff’s love affair. A few years later I understood it wasn’t simply a love story, but a novel about revenge and retribution. Haworth, where the Brontë sisters grew up and wrote their books, wasn’t too far away from Leeds. I pestered my mother to take me there, and finally, riding on three different buses, we arrived in the village, and visited the vicarage which had become a museum. I was fascinated by their early writings and their memorabilia.
The reach of God and Gothic is exemplified in Part IV, “Later Gothic: Re-Enchanting the Material”, where Margaret Oliphant, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, Arthur Machen, Evelyn Underhill, Charles Williams, J. Meade Falkner, and M. R. James are all considered. Post-Milbank, “the Gothic” has not only become more difficult but also much more enjoyable. (Dr Michael Wheeler)Lancashire Telegraph describes a Rochdale walk:
Another local connection is a Rochdale lad called James Kay.Los Angeles Times discusses the novel Milkman by Anna Burns:
He founded the first teacher training college in England, St Mark’s in Chelsea.
He married the heiress of the Shuttleworth family and the couple made their home in Padiham in Victorian times and Charlotte Bronte frequently visited them in Gawthorpe Hall. (Ron Freethy)
They want her to stop walking around town with her nose in a book, to which she asks, “Are you saying it's okay for him to go around with Semtex but not okay for me to read ‘Jane Eyre’ in public?" (A.N. Devers)Regió7 (in Catalan) talks about a local actress present in the Teatre Lliure production of Jane Eyre and Ara presents the production:
La peça teatral que parteix de la famosa novel·la que Brontë va escriure el 1847 és una adaptació realitzada per Anna Maria Ricart i dirigida per Carme Portacelli, amb Ariadna Gil en el paper de Jane Eyre i Abel Folk en el de Rochester. La història narra el creixement i la maduració, en clau de superació personal, d'una noia al llarg de la seva vida, i conté nombroses referències autobiogràfiques. Tal i com va explicar [Magda] Puig en una entrevista amb Regió7, Portacelli va demanar a l'intèrpret de Castellbell i el Vilar que fes tot de petits papers que sumen, en conjunt, una notable presència escènica. Així, Puig es fica a la pell de fins a set personatges. (Translation)
Carme Portaceli dirigeix aquest text de Charlotte Brontë adaptat per Anna Maria Ricart i amb música de la mateixa Clara Peya per acostar als nostres dies aquesta heroïna romàntica i, tot i així, feminista que aquí encarna l’actriu Ariadna Gil. (Laura Serra) (Translation)ABC (Spain) has an article about the 2019 economical perspectives with several Brontë mentions:
Se nos dibuja con estos mimbres un modelo de incertidumbres difícil de evaluar a día de hoy. Deduzco por ello un año pleno de cumbres borrascosas tal y como dejó magníficamente escrito en 1847 la única novela de Emily Brontë y que años más tarde fue llevada al cine por el director William Wyler en 1939. Y no solo intuyo cumbres borrascosas, sino también algunos cielos enmarañados (también cielos velazqueños) en las relaciones económicas internacionales. Brontë narraba las complejas relaciones afectivas de las dos familias que viven en la zona -los Linton y los Earnshaw- y que les llevarán a situaciones poco agradables y violento distanciamiento que dificultarán su acercamiento durante años. (Vicente Vera) (Translation)Spiegel (Germany) reviews the film Colette:
Gleichwohl muss der geschäftstüchtige Willy schon einen mächtigen Hau gehabt haben, um fast 100 Jahre nach dem Erfolg von Mary Shelleys "Frankenstein" (deren Selbstbehauptung ähnlich steinig voran ging) zu ignorieren, dass ein weiblicher Autorenname sogar lukrativ sein kann: Skandal sells - genau wie Sex. Mit Jane Austen, den Brontës oder George Sand hätten sich zudem Beispiele für erfolgreiche Schriftstellerinnen gefunden. (Jenni Zylka) (Translation)El Espectador (Colombia) publishes an obituary of the writer and intellectual Amos Oz:
Según Amos Oz, su madre, Fania Mussman, de quien huían asustados los gatos cuando se dirigía hacia ellos, como si cada uno “pudiera oler de lejos la sentencia a la que estaba condenada” sufrió a causa de constantes migrañas que le agravaban el insomnio. Al filo del tiempo, parecía haberse convertido, según él, en la desdichada mujer encerrada en el desván, de Jane Eyre, novela de Charlotte Brontë. (Luis Carlos Muñoz Sarmiento) (Translation)Infobae (Argentina) mentions the writer Laura Ramos in an article about Laurence Debray:
Su requisitoria recuerda también un poco la de la argentina Laura Ramos, hija del historiador y político trotskista -más tarde convertido al peronismo- Jorge Abelardo Ramos: "Entregué mi infancia a la revolución", dijo en un reciente reportaje en la revista Noticias en ocasión de la salida de su libro "Infernales: la hermandad Brontë". La vida bohemia de sus padres la llevó a desear cosas que para ellos eran de "pequeña burguesa", como por ejemplo, que a su regreso del colegio, su madre la estuviese esperando con una torta…La Voz de Galicia (in Spanish) on books as gifts on this upcoming Three Kings Day:
Pese a los esfuerzos de su padre por darle una educación marxista, ella se identificaba más con los personajes de Mujercitas y Jane Eyre. (Claudia Peiró) (Translation)
Desde Lectocosmos también aseguran que los clásicos son otra petición recurrente para los Reyes Magos con títulos como Ana Karenina o Cumbres Borrascosas. (M.M.G.) (Translation)ÉcranLarge (France) inaugurates the 2019 blunder section attributing Wuthering Heights to Charlotte Brontë. The Daily Mail's Thought of the Week is a quote from Charlotte Brontë. Jane Austen Runs My Life posts about Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre's Library (in Spanish) posts about another Jane Eyre edition: the 2015 Waterstones one. Philip Hamlyn Williams updates the information about his Williams Smith Williams's biography and an upcoming paper for Brontë Studies. Finally, the Brontë Babe Blog publishes an original short play by Sophie Marlowe: To Angria.
In her version of “The Enormous Crocodile,” Aboulker has re-imagined Dahl’s story with a girl sitting by the side of the lake on a hot summer day, as she often did during her holidays. She preferred to isolate herself to the south, and read her favorite authors- Dickens, Brontë or Austen.The Times of India talks about the Times Literature Festival in Delhi, India:
Day one of the fourth edition of the Times Literature Festival ended on a high note as Henry Eliot’s talk on ‘Classics the World is Reading’ received a full house attendance. Through his talk, Eliot, author of ‘The Penguin Classics Book’ and Creative Editor of Penguin Classics in the UK, took the audience on a literary tour of around 4000 years of classics in a session that lasted for 40 minutes. (...)Bollywood Life asks for a second season of Meri Aashiqui Tum Se Hi:
With 19th century romanticism, literature started to become dark and the American novel ‘Moby-Dick’ is an example of it. But Eliot’s book recommendation from this era is the 1847 classic ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë. (Surabhi Rawat)
And today is the day when we talk about Colors' popular daily soap Meri Aashiqui Tum Se Hi. The show started in 2014 and aired for a total of two years. Inspired by Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Brontë, the series made TV actor Shakti Arora and Radhika Madan big names in the industry. To such an extent that Madan even signed two films in Bollywood after it. With around 446 episodes, the romance between Ranveer and Ishani, characters played by Shakti and Radhika respectively, went on to become a rage.A recent student production in The New Orleans Advocate:
Remarkable women throughout history came to life recently at Mount Carmel Academy’s “Living HERstory Biographical Celebration." Fifty students took an active role in the event, each choosing a historically significant woman to research. Students told their subject’s story, sharing information about her to classmates in creative and interactive ways. The women portrayed included Sonia Sotomayor, Nellie Bly, Elizabeth Tudor, Harriet Tubman, Agatha Christie, Marie Curie, the Brontë sisters, Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai and Ada Lovelace.The Manchester Evening News mentions one of the Coronation Street plots that involved Wuthering Heights:
In one of their most memorable storylines earlier in their friendship an infatuated Mary kidnapped Norris in plot similar to the novel Misery.The Stage publishes the obituary of the actor Andrew Burt:
And she fantasised about her and Norris being Weatherfield's answer to Heathcliffe (sic) and Cathy from Wuthering Heights. (Dianne Bourne)
He found early professional work in rep in Perth, Cheltenham and the Worthing Connaught, where his admired Heathcliff in a 1974 staging of Wuthering Heights prompted The Stage to note of his portrayal: “There are moments when [it] reaches great heights.” (Michael Quinn)The Boar has some Christmas traditions for the book lover:
If exploring a new author or literary genre isn’t for them, people often re-read their favourite books during the Christmas period. Wuthering Heights is a classic for the run-up to Christmas, although I prefer Pride and Prejudice as my annual comfort read – but that’s a debate for another time. These are of course books which lack a festive theme despite their association to Christmas. (Jasmine Dhesi)ElectricLit interviews Charlotte Whittle, the English translator of the Norah Lange novel, Personas en la sala:
Heather Cleary: Excellent. So, what is People in the Room about?The Times interviews the author Barbara Taylor Bradford:
CW: The scenario is that a seventeen-year-old girl — the novel’s narrator — lives in a well-to-do suburb of Buenos Aires, and spends hours spying on three mysterious women, whom she assumes to be spinsters, and who live in the house opposite her own. One night, she is struck by the arresting image of their three faces arranged in the form of a “pale clover.” Lange said in an interview that the image came to her after she saw the famous portrait of the three pale-faced Brontë sisters by their brother Branwell, who erased himself, but whose ghostly outline can still be seen in the painting.
Amid much literary speculation attempting to root Bradford’s oeuvre within the traditions of the romantic poets and the Brontës, [Piers] Dudgeon came up with a scoop in his biography. Barbara’s mother was not just illegitimate, but her real father (Barbara’s grandfather) was very likely the Marquess of Ripon. I wonder how she had reacted to this exciting news. (Andrew Billen)A press release from the Folkteatern (Göteborg, Sweden) announces the upcoming productions, including a Jane Eyre for next year:
Vårens premiär på Stora Scenen blir en helt ny dramatisering av den feministiska romanklassikern Jane Eyre av Charlotte Brontë. Regisserar gör Ragna Wei och för dramatiseringen står Tone Schunnesson, uppmärksammad för sin debutroman Tripprapporter från 2016.Bon Dia (Andorra) mentions Charlotte Brontë in an opinion column:
För mig handlar Jane Eyre om flera saker. Viljan och längtan att slå sig fri och bli någon! Viljan att upptäcka sig själv och världen. Det handlar också om hur man balanserar att ge sig själv till någon annan utan att fullständigt att förlora sig. Sedan har Jane Eyre en mörkare sida, som är den riktigt intressanta, som handlar om att förvara och utplåna kvinnor som uppför sig, för tiden, oförklarligt, säger Tone Schunnesson.
Medverkar gör Andrea Edwards, Karin de Frumerie, Nina Jemth, Lena B Nilsson, Jonas Sjöqvist, Francisco Sobrado, Helmon Solomon och Emma Österlöf. Koreograf är Damjan Kecojevic och kompositör Chris Lancaster. Premiär för Jane Eyre blir det den 2 mars 2019.
El debat està obert i polaritzat, i com la Charlotte Brontë va escriure el 1847, “el convencionalisme no és moralitat. El fariseisme no és religió. Atacar una cosa no vol dir agredir l’altre”. Amb aquestes paraules s’obre la novel·la de John Irving [The Cider House Rules] amb aquestes paraules es tanca aquest escrit. (Elena Aranda) (Translation)Coming Soon (Italy) reviews the film Colette:
Come ora in Colette, affresco biografico su una delle scrittrici di cui la Francia è più orgogliosa, femminista e in lotta per il riconoscimento del suo talento, raccontata in un film che potrebbe parlare di una delle sorelle Brontë, non fosse per l’epoca. (Mauro Donzelli) (Translation)El Universal (México) goes a bit further than the traditional Cumbres Borrascosas description of the political summits:
Decido, entonces, divagar sobre la semana, contar cómo vienen las temáticas a los escritores. Lo primero ha sido Cumbres borrascosas, la novela inicialmente incomprendida de Emily Brontë, con su desgarrador juego de matryoshkas y hoy convertida en un clásico de la literatura inglesa. Apropiada para un encuentro de guerra económica, de desavenencias y de desplantes. Pero he aquí que de golpe todo se distiende, la cumbre fluye, los acuerdos aparecen. (Teódulo López Meléndez) (Translation)Feminist books on Onedio (Turkey), like A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf:
Kendine Ait Bir Oda, Virginia Woolf'un 1928 yılında kapılarını kadınlara yeni yeni açmakta olan Cambridge Üniversitesi'ndeki kız öğrencilere hitaben yaptığı bir konuşması üzerine şekillenmiştir. İngiltere'de kadınların seçme ve seçilme hakkını elde etmelerinden bir yıl sonra yayımlanan kitap o tarihten günümüze feminizm tartışmalarının locus classicus'u olageldi. Jane Austen ve Charlotte Brontë'den, kadınların niçin bir Savaş ve Barış yazamadıklarına[.] (elainebenes) (Translation)Christian Bookaholic reviews favourably The Other Wife by Juliet Bell; Psychologie's LifeLabs approaches the Brontës and Jane Eyre in a very simplistic way, in our opinion in Psychologies LifeLabs. The Eyre Guide continues analyzing the Jane Eyre manuscript.
The 2016 Brontë biopic project directed by David Anthony Thomas has a new addition to its cast. After Rachel Teate who will play Emily Brontë we have a new Branwell: Matthew Lewis.An actor who starred in the Harry Potter films has been chosen for a major role in a multi-million pound film exploring the lives of the Brontë sisters.
Matthew Lewis, who played the part of Neville Longbottom in the eight Harry Potter films, was selected for a new biopic called The Brontës. He will portray the sisters’ troubled brother, Branwell.
In October of last year, Yorkshire-based Clothworkers Films revealed an estimated budget of £10 million for the production about the famous literary siblings – Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
The company has said the film will be the world’s first English-language project of its kind. The two-hour feature is due to be released on April 21, 2016 – exactly 200 years since Charlotte Bronte was born.
Mr Lewis’s involvement was announced on Monday by the film’s director, David Anthony Thomas. Mr Thomas said: “I’m really excited to be working with Matthew Lewis on The Brontës film. Matthew will be playing the role of Branwell Brontë.
“Matthew has been my first choice to play Branwell since we first started working on the production, and I’m delighted he’s agreed to play the role.” (...)
His role as Branwell will see him getting to grips with a character who struggled to find a niche in life, despite being a capable scholar and a published poet. (...)
Mr Thomas, who is himself a lifelong Brontë fan, said despite the many bleaker elements of the family’s story, his film will also celebrate their resilience and success.
He added he wants the film to be faithful to history, while being accessible to audiences unfamiliar with the Brontës’ work. (Keighley News)
 |
| ©Ben Lack Photography Ltd |
The cottage was shut up for years following the failure of a birthplace museum on the tourist trail.There's some confusion about what the actual place where the Brontës were born is (if it can be known at all). Chadwick's In the Footsteps of the Brontës says that the most probable place was the drawing room (as it was the warmer) which is at the right of the entrance. Nevertheless the Haworth Village website says that the room to the right is the dining room (!). You can compare the room as it was in Barbara Whitehead's time here with the new look here. Also you can compare the children's bedroom then and now.
It was let as private rented accommodation until it came back on the market last year.
The historical home had been rented as bedsits to tenants in search of cheap accommodation but the plaques commemorating the births of the four gifted children outside the faded front door were barely noticed.
After the last tenants packed their bags the absentee landlord put the property on the market last year.
The Brontë birthplace trust was formed by local villagers to save the property and turn it back into a museum again.
But this scheme failed after Bradford Council decided it could not afford to buy the property.
Amid fears it would be turned back into flats, businessman Mark de Luca and his wife Michelle spotted the near-derelict property believing it to be an unpolished tourism gem.
He renovated the home which was suffering from damp and flooding and has turned it into a deli where visitors can look round the Brontë’s private quarters.
The cafe is due to open up in May following an extensive renovation.
Among other features, visitors will be able to inspect the very hearth where all three sisters were born.
It also boasts the writing desk built into the structure where Patrick Haworth wrote his first sermon - about the Battle of Waterloo. (...)
The couple are sleeping in Patrick and Maria’s room complete with the writing desk where he wrote his first sermon – on Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.
The second bedroom where the younger Brontës slept has become the drawing room, though it still has the built-in wardrobe used by the children.
The third bedroom used by the Brontë children’s nurse serves as a study while the downstairs scullery has become their private kitchen.
The rest of the downstairs rooms, including the drawing room with the famous fireplace, have been laid out as a delicatessen and coffee shop with room for 35 people due to open next month.
A counter and open kitchen serving cakes, sandwiches, and pastries has been created in one of the front extensions built in the 1900s as a butcher’s shop.
The couple hope the trendy décor will attract of a new generation of Brontë fans who previously may have regarded the sisters’ writings as a touch highbrow.
Mr de Luca added: ‘We want to make the Brontës cool and trendy. The Brontë Society meetings and events at Haworth seem to attract mainly older people.
‘The original idea of a museum is great - but you do not really get to sit there and enjoy reading a Brontë book or a newspaper.’
Birthplace Trust Chairman Steve Stanworth said: ‘I am delighted. It will once again be somewhere that Brontë fans can see the actual place the literary giants were brought into the world. (...)
Bronte Society Chairman Sally McDonald said: ‘The birthplace in Thornton is hugely important in the Bronte story.
‘In the bicentenary year of 2016 the world’s attention will turn to all places linked with Charlotte Brontë.
‘Some years ago former Brontë Society member, Barbara Whitehead, bought and tried to restore the house but sadly it proved just too big a project.
‘It is a pity the Birthplace Trust’s hopes of turning the house into a museum were pipped at the post but it wasn’t to be and it is heartening to hear the new owners are keen to sympathetically retain the history.’
In all great love stories you need a proper cast-iron obstacle that stops everyone living happily ever after - at least for a while.Adrian Mourby in The Guardian tells the story of her wife's doll, Annsie, who has been passing from generation to generation since 1840:
You need class differences, family secrets, a lack of dowry for her or a lack of prospects for him.
You need a mad wife in the attic which prevents you from loving another (Jane Eyre), or a father who says if you don't marry the man he's picked out then off to the nunnery, missie (Midsummer Night's Dream). (Jennifer Salway)
With her Charlotte Brontë centre-parting, Annsie is not much to look at. Having seen too many scary films that make hay with malignant Victoriana, I'm wary whenever my wife removes Annsie from her cardboard coffin and shroud of spare clothes; a brown and blue coat, a brown and white winter dress, a blue and white summer dress and an apron. With her brown eyes (rare in dolls of the time), porcelain-pink cheeks and white kid-leather limbs, she radiates a disturbing inscrutability.The Herald reviews the new edition of The Golden Fleece by Muriel Spark:
She also had a special affinity with writers such as the ill-fated, short-lived Bronte sisters and she was especially proud - as well she might be - of her own biographical study of Emily Bronte. The modern writers she most admired were those with transcendent style. Proust's roman fleuve was a book she knew intimately. Here she recalls his interest in hats, one she shared. (Alan Taylor)This columnist from The Strait Times (Malaysia) describes his love for literature:
I spend many lonely hours reading some of the most impenetrable classics known to man. No, I am not a literary scholar. I am forever a student of literature. I devoured Ulysses, Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, War and Peace and Don Quixote with the obnoxious intent to please myself.The Telegraph & Argus lists several of the upcoming activites at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
On Wednesday, April 23, at 7pm, the Parsonage stages a reading from playwright Samantha Ellis’s new novel, How To Be A Heroine: Or What I’ve Learned From Reading Too Much, as she reflects on the books that shaped her, and meets her literary heroines.Keighley News reports the results of the top 75 Yorkshire icons poll:
Easter workshops include Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!, transforming boiled eggs using dyeing and painting techniques, and Words To Pictures, where participants can be inspired by the museum’s pictures and objects to write their own story or poem.
The Churchyard Challenge gives visitors chance to explore mini beasts and unusual plants lurking beneath the stones, and complete our graveyard trail to find out about people who once lived in Haworth.
Haworth’s legendary Brontë sisters have taken fourth spot in a poll to find Yorkshire’s top 75 icons.The Irish Times recommends literary breaks in England:
The literary siblings were beaten only by Yorkshire Pudding – which took top spot – York Minster and the Yorkshire Dales.
Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the one-time home to sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, said she was pleased with the result.
“Fourth out of 75 seems pretty good to me!” she said.
“I think for a lot of people the Brontës have coloured the Yorkshire landscape and will be forever associated with the county.
Haworth, YorkshireSt Thomas Times journal reviews Local Customs by Audrey Thomas:
A cottage industry of afternoon teas and literary mementos has overwhelmed the village of Haworth, once home to the Brontë sisters.
To get there, take the Metro Rail Network from Leeds to Keighley, then do the last six kilometres aboard the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway steam train (kwvr.co.uk) which featured in The Railway Children.
Nothing is conclusive and in well-described scenes reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in which Edward Rochester’s attic-bound wife made eerie midnight forays into other parts of the house, the mystery deepens. All of this is pondered by Letty, but from an after-death perspective.The Sydney Morning Herald echoes the words of the American poet John Ashbery saying that "the great themes of poetry are death, love and the weather":
In Middlemarch, Dorothea and Will Ladislaw stand hand in hand looking out at a storm where the lightning is ''the terror of a hopeless love''. And where would Wuthering Heights be without the wuthering? (Jane Sullivan)The Swarthmore College Daily Gazette presents yet another local performances of The Mystery of Irma Vep:
Inspired by Rebecca and Wuthering Heights, The Mystery of Irma Vep tells the story of Lord Edgar Hillcrest (Patrick Ross ‘15) and his new wife, Enid (Sasha Rojavin ‘15). Edgar’s first wife, the titular Irma, died tragically and he has yet to put her behind him. After a series of mysterious incidents on the estate – including an attack on Enid – Edgar goes to Egypt in search of answers. (Allison Hrabar)Hartford Books Examiner interviews the writer Emma Donoghue:
What book(s) were you likely to be caught keeping company with under the covers?Página 12 (Argentina) talks about the Brazilian patron of the arts Laurinda Santos Lobo:
Fairy tales above all, plus nineteenth-century novels; I remember making a family tree to help me sort out the plot of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
No tuvo padre, la crió Murtinho, el hermano millonario de su madre, y fue gracias a esas monedas de oro que las hectáreas de yerba mate le dieron a su tío homeópata que Laurinda no fue sólo la huérfana heredera –sin destino de hospicio como el que le tocó en suerte a Jane Eyre– sino la mecenas avant-garde de la belle époque carioca. (Marisa Avigliano) (Translation)This was an April Fool's prank published on Les Histoires Sans Fin but it's still very disturbing:
Les lecteurs d'aujourd'hui ne sont plus forcément les mêmes que ceux d'il y a une trentaine d'années. En effet, plusieurs maisons d'édition américaine se sont rendu compte d'une perte à fois des repères en culture générale, mais également de la dégradation du niveau de lecture des jeunes lecteurs. Pour ce faire, un vaste programme intitulé Re(ad)make© pour redonner envie de lire les livres classiques se met en place doucement dans les plusieurs écoles test. (...)Psychologies (Romania) lists Jane and Rochester and Catherine and Heathcliff among other literary love stories; an app designer and Brontëite on La Repubblica (Italy); Flavorwire celebrates the National Poetry Month with a poem by Emily Brontë: A Death-scene.
L'une des grosses surprises de ce projet est le travail que devrait effectuer Stephenie Meyer, l'auteure de Twilight, sur le roman dont elle a aidé à relancer les ventes, Les Hauts de Hurlevent d'Emily Brontë.
L'auteure mormone confie « Je suis ravie de participer à Re(ad)make ! Même si ils ont adoré l'histoire d'Emily Brontë, mes lecteurs m'ont parfois avoué n'avoir pas tout compris de cette histoire d'amour, de vengeance et de famille... J'ai été honoré que l'État du Wisconsin me l'ait demandé et j'ai accepté immédiatement. » (Fred Ricou) (Translation)
Unless explicitly said
