The Scotsman talks about a new auction at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh (13 Jan 2010 11:00) which includes some fine editions of Brontë books:Books, Maps & Manuscripts - Sale 274Anne Rice is interviewed by L.A. Weekly and insists on the debt the Twilight saga owes to Jane Eyre:
Lot 55
Bronte, Charlotte, Emily & Anne
Life and works. London: Smith Elder, 1890-94. 7 volumes, 8vo, plates, original green cloth, some hinges a little weak
Estimate £100-150
Lot 56
Bronte, Charlotte, Emily and Anne
[Novels]. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, [n.d.]. 7 volumes, 8vo, green half calf gilt, spines slightly faded; Dickens, C. [Works]. [N.d.] 19 volumes, Daily News Memorial Edition, plates, maroon half morocco, slightly rubbed; Minarik, E.H. Little bear's visit. 1961. 8vo, plates by Maurice Sendak, cloth-backed boards, corners slightly rubbed; Burns, R. Poems. Edinburgh, 1811. 8vo, 2 volumes, engraved plates, modern cloth, pencil to frontispiece of volume 2; Waugh, E. Men at arms. 1952; Robb, J. Murrayfield Golf Club. 1947. Original cloth; and 20 others, miscellaneous (51)
Estimate £200-300
While she hasn’t read the Twilight novels, Rice has seen the movies. “They’re romances for very young kids. They’re about a young woman wanting and needing an older, mysterious figure who’s protective and yet something of a menace,” she says. It’s the Brontë sisters and Jane Eyre. “It was almost genius on Stephenie Meyer’s part to set it in high school. It works perfectly.” (Gendy Alimirung)More Twilight connections. On the Canwest News Service we read one more example of the saga of Wuthering Heights marketed as Bella's favourite:
The sign on a table inside a Toronto bookstore says, "Bella's picks. "Here, among Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire novels, are other titles wearing the series's trademark black, glossy jackets: Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights.And YPulse:
The tagline on the cover of Shakespeare's tragic play says "The original forbidden love," while the cover of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights features a seal that declares it to be: "Bella and Edward's favorite book."
HarperCollins, the publisher, has boosted sales of the classics by reprinting them with new "gothic" jackets to attract Twilight fans.
"Wuthering Heights has been selling much better ever since Twilight became so popular because fans know it's Bella's favourite book. But these editions in particular, because they look so similar to Twilight, have really taken off," says Trevor Dayton, vice-president, kids and entertainment at Indigo Books & Music Inc.
He says since the retailer started carrying the revamped books in the summer, stores have sold more than twice as many as previous editions, with sales heating up this holiday season.
"I remember reading Emily Brontë in high school. I can't say that I had any interest in reading those books but was told to by the teacher," he said. "I think it's better to have the books packaged in a way that is going to appeal to [readers] and endorsed by an author they clearly love."
Meyer's books, Breaking Dawn, Eclipse and New Moon, were among the top five best-selling books of the year, according to industry tracker BookNet Canada.
The protagonist, Bella Swan, makes reference to Wuthering Heights in the series, comparing her vampire love, Edward Cullen, to Brontë's brooding Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights, with its Meyer-inspired jacket, has topped British bookseller, Waterstone's classic book chart for the first time since it started recording figures in 1998. "I don't think a vampire's recommendation has ever sent a book to No. 1 before," Simon Robertson, the company's classics buyer, told The Telegraph.
Realizing that Teens Read. As horrified as some critics and literature buffs were at the “Twilight-ification” of classics like “Wuthering Heights” both here and in the UK, the fact that these teen-friendly covers helped centuries-old books top bestseller lists is pretty sweet. (meredith)The Financial Times includes a question with a Brontë reference in its Christmas Quiz:
In his book Tormented Hope, Brian Dillon identifies a disorder shared by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Marcel Proust, Andy Warhol, Florence Nightingale, Alice James and Glenn Gould. What is it? (Ludovic Hunter-Tilney)
Vampire writers today are taking the story in new directions. What do you think of the vampire fad? (...)Not the first time we read Anne Rice describing Twilight's success and comparing it to Brontë novels.
The concept of the vampire is a great concept, so it's not surprising that many different authors could go to that concept and write fascinating stories. Stephanie Meyer with the “Twilight” stuff really is repeating the basic theme of the Bronte sisters: a young girl fascinated by a mysterious older figure. She's made it a vampire that goes to high school, but it's basically an older man that's both protective and something of a menace. That's straight out of “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” - the infatuation with Heathcliff, the infatuation with Mr. Rochester. (Bruce Fessier)
She describes Martin Scorsese's set as very calming (despite the fact that she plays a child killer in an insane asylum – she evokes Shutter Island as "a cross between Emily Brontë and B-movies of the 1950s"). "It was old school: everybody's the best, everybody's in their place and there's no rushing around because it's all been done before the actors arrive. I just thought: this is unbelievable to be here, and I don't care what happens. I don't care if I don't end up in the movie." (Gaby Wood)The New Zealand Herald describes the next PechaKucha Night in Auckland with a Brontë (although not exactly positive) reference:
If the book club scones are dry and you're sick of Nancy droning on about Jane Eyre, it might be time to get your fix somewhere else. (Rebecca Parry)The Hindu warns us that Jane Eyre is a fictional character. In its review of Me Cheeta: The Autobiography by James Lever
There is (as far as we know) no such thing as a monkey capable of language and literature, but then, nor is there any such thing as an orc or an elf, or Jane Eyre, or Hercule Poirot, or Sartaj Singh, or Rocket Singh .(Aditya Sudarshan)The San Francisco Sentinel reminds us that Emily Brontë was born in a year of the tiger, The Halifax Reader recommends Maureen Adams's Shaggy Muses, Webers in London! are visiting Brontë country, Nerves Strengthened with Tea reviews positively Villete, huffenglish.com posts about loving Wuthering Heights, Le Diffuseur Poétique (in French) posts a long and interesting review of the selection of poetry by Emily Brontë published by Hesperus some time ago: Poems of Solitude, katharsis posts a Jane Eyre inspired magnetic poem. Finally, Unikornis posts about the Brontë sisters in Hungarian.
Jennifer Dean: What do you think of the current vampire types like those in "Twilight" and "True Blood?"The Guardian publishes its best of TV in 2009. Tom Hardy's Heathcliff appears but not directly:
Rice: It's fun. I think there's nothing there to be frightened about or upset about. I've seen both the "Twilight" series and I think they were just romances for young teens. I mean, it's the same formula as "Jane Eyre" basically. The young girl ... the other mysterious figure takes an interest in her and is both protective and yet is a threat. And it's kind of, I think, Stephenie Meyer hit on that formula and it's a formula that always works. She's just done it in a new way. I'm amazed that parents are kind of frightened. I think the kids reading the book know that it's fiction. There were people a hundred years ago frightened when people were reading the book "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. There's nothing to be frightened about. It's just fiction.
5. The Take (Sky 1) Tom Hardy is a star. And sex on a stick. His Heathcliff later in the year called for smelling salts. (Kathryn Flett)The Charleston Gazette invites Kanawha County readers to vote in the third round of the Kanawha County Public Library's Book Brawl. Wuthering Heights is paired with The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.
There is the prospect of a book of her correspondence with Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, to whom she was editor, confidante and "nanny". She is loving going through the letters again, missives from another life. As she shows me little extracts, I hear the cadences of her abiding sternness of will, taking on all-comers, and living to tell the tales. (Tim Adams)Penguin Brontës are recommended for Christmas in The Salisbury Post. banker from Chicago identifies himself with Wuthering Heights (!):
Johnathan Choe, executive vice-president of retail banking for Fifth Third Bank's metropolitan Chicago and Northern Indiana networks (...)An immigrant from Korea at age 6, identifies with Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." "My father died when I was 13; my mother worked double shifts and sacrificed to provide for us. Out of tragedy, there is hope." (Laura Bianchi in Chicago Business)A young student from Sri Lanka chooses Jane Eyre as her favourite book in The Sunday Times,
With its gothic mansion and dark secret lurking in the east wing à la Jane Eyre, its wild desolate moors like Wuthering Heights, and a miracle scene – crippled boy walks – to rival Heidi, Frances Hodgson Burnett's original novel is quite operatic enough without added songs, however pleasant. (Lyn Gardner)We believe, though, that the reviewer is mixing together Jane Eyre (where the dark secret actually lurked in the attic) and Rebecca (where the west wing had been the first Mrs de Winter's domain).
It’s hard to be a child, having no words to truly describe what you are feeling. Adults—well, some of us, anyway—have learned to talk about our feelings, to analyze them, to come up with reasons for the vast tides of emotion that heave in, foaming, and smack us with oceanic power. But kids, not so much. In Charlotte Brontë’s magnificent book Jane Eyre, a kindly apothecary asks 10-year-old Jane what made her unhappy:Anne Rice is interviewed by The New York Magazine and asked about Twilight:
“How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings or express them in words.” (Lynne Jonell)
Do you have a take on the way in which Twilight serves Stephenie Meyer’s Mormon beliefs?The NPR features Mark Twain's Autobiography and recalls the Wuthering Heights anecdote. Man of la Book reviews Jane Eyre and The Memory of Rain is giving away a copy - US only though - of the 1945 version of the novel with wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. Definitely quite a treat!
I don’t know enough about Mormon beliefs to see it in that context. What I saw there was woman’s romance. And I don’t mean that in a denigrating way. I saw the same thing that works in the work of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the idea of a young and vulnerable young woman falling in love with essentially an older, stronger, mysterious person. In Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester is threatening but he’s also protective and loving, and eventually comes around to be totally subdued and tamed by Jane. And that’s really what I saw in Twilight, in the two movies I saw. Young girl falls in love with this boy who’s capable of killing people, he’s a vampire, but he really loves her and protects her. And it was the same old story. Of course, there’s been a lot of writing in the world about why that particular romance functions. Is it about a young girl and her relationship to her father, as people have argued? Is it about the weaker feminine in love with the stronger masculine? It has a lot of deep layers of meaning, and I think Stephenie Meyer hit on that again in the Twilight books. And she did this stroke of genius thing of having these menacing vampires go to high school. (Gwynne Watkins)
Marketing shifts are hard to ignore and even harder to stay apart from when you’re pushing your product. When something is in, be it a genre or author, everyone else wants to keep up. Often, the easiest way to do so is a quick rebrand (it’s usually the cheapest way, too.) The cartoon cover is hardly the first example of this move either. When Twilight took over the world, many books, including some literary classics, got re-released with minimalist black, white, and red covers designed to deliberately evoke the iconography of Stephenie Meyer’s work. That’s how we ended up with copies of Wuthering Heights and Anne Rice’s back-catalog designed to be casually confused with the sparkly brethren they inspired. (Kayleigh Donaldson)
In Dave Eggers’s chilling novel The Every, about a not-too-distant AI-fueled future, art is given the star treatment. And not in a good way. Everything is ranked, and also “liked,” kudoed, and condemned, by any and all consumers (“consumer” being anyone ingesting the so-called “content” of paintings, music, books, movies, etc., which is to say, everyone). It’s close enough to how things already work in the off-page real world to seem obvious, maybe even harmless. That is, until Eggers offers his characters the power to crowdsource edits to the liked, kudoed, and condemned. And just like that—poof!—there go “unlikable” characters such as, say, Grace Poole in Jane Eyre. Leaving feminist critics, and anyone who likes a ripping yarn, out of luck. Not to mention Charlotte Brontë rolling in her grave. (Bridget Quinn)
Keighley, West YorkshireWhat’s filmed there? Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Emily and Downton AbbeyYou’d be forgiven for not having heard of Keighley before, but once you learn this town is the UK's most romantic film location, it's sure to be on your radar. After all, the unsuspecting West Yorkshire market town has hosted 69 movies and almost 25 per cent of them have been romantic.In the town, you’ll find beautiful buildings like the Dalton Mills, Cliffe Castle, and Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, so you can live out your period drama love story in picturesque surroundings.While you’re in West Yorkshire, it might be a good idea to book an experience or two to really make the most of your time in the county. We’ve selected some of the most romantic activities below, and all of them involve food — lucky you! (Laura Wybrow)
We hear today via The Telegraph & Argus of the sad fire (14 August) and demolition (17 August) of one of Haworth's last mills, Ebor Mill, which now housed not a worsted company as it did when it was first built in/around 1819 but a spring factory, Airedale Springs. In 1849, the mill was bought by the well-known Haworth family, the Merralls, who were prominent in the village and had many connections with the Brontës at differente points in their lives. Most famously, Branwell Brontë was friends with Hartley and/or Michael Merrall (sources differ; he probably knew both of them anyway). Branwell was dead by the time Michael Merrall took responsibility of Ebor in 1849 and the mill was in the Merrall family's hands until 1965 when it passed onto the current hands.Did you read the Twilight novels?Smoky Mountain News reviews Moonshiner's Daughter by Mary Judith Messer. The article begins like this:
No. I did see the movies, mainly because people were asking me. I thought they were entertaining and they were for young people. The movies were fairly superficial, very touchingly naïve, traditionally romantic, and they had to do with a young woman with mysterious figures in her life—like Jane Eyre. I do love the series True Blood. I don't always like the way they handle things, but they have a great sense of humor. (Sarah Pulliam Bailey)
Sometimes they use the picks and shovels of fiction; Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Thomas Wolfe come most famously to mind as writers who frequently turned to the terrors and triumphs of their adolescence and early life to make their books.A sophomore who reads Wuthering Heights (But [his] summer isn't all fun...) in Agoura Hills Patch; Angieville posts an enthusiastic review of April Lindner's Jane; awsumgal is recreating the Rochester (and eventually Jane) from Jane Eyre 1983 in a doll (seriously); Little Ladybug posts about Jane Eyre 2006 and Judging a Book by its Cover posts about the original novel; Sacramento Book Review reviews The Brontës Went to Woolworths; nuvezita talks about Wuthering Heights and adaptations on YouTube.
William added: “I’m very proud of my ancestor. Few people realise he was so much more than an anti-slave campaigner. He was also responsible for the first bit of human rights legislation and he spent a third of his fortune supporting schools for underprivileged girls. The Brontë sisters went to one of his schools and I like to think he had something to do with their later success.I think that Mr Wilberforce is in error here. It's true that William Wilberforce helped the Brontës but in a rather indirect way, helping his father Patrick Brontë when he was in Cambridge:
He was a benefactor to poor evangelically inclined clergymen and ordinands, contributing to Patrick’s upkeep while he was at St John’s. Later he helped him to obtain justice in the William Nowell affair. Whether he and Patrick met during the latter’s Cambridge years is not known, but they could have been brought together later, for example during Wilberforce’s stay with Dury, the vicar of Keighley, in July 1827. ( A Brontë Encyclopedia, Robert & Louise Barnard, Blackwell Publishing, 2007)The Deccan Herald (India) reviews positively Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow:
In Jude Morgan’s The Taste of Sorrow, the sisters come back as dramatically as it is discreetly possible for the dead. This is a flesh and blood biography.Ottawa Citizen recommends taking a course in Oxford University:
Facts come in thick and fast but are instantly converted into warm breaths, sidelong glances, sighs and suppressed longings. The mother does not go gently into the night, she rants and raves blasphemously, already not a woman one saw during those days, on her deathbed because of ‘too many children, too quickly’. The girls are there for each other, with ‘the ripple of Papa’somewhere around. Patrick Brontë is a widower ‘consoling himself by turning into an old, childless bachelor’. (...)
The inherent elegance of piety and poverty, the isolated living tantamount to mere survival at times, the losses, the little, little pauses that tuning-forked into silences that screamed, the submissions and the rebellions that grew out of these submissions, all recorded for posterity in a way their lives have seldom been chronicled. Character after character, big or small, taken into account, empathised with, expressed inside out. A huff and a puff, and the Brontë building is up.
The author richly compensates for Emily’s cry — ‘But we have never been like that, have we? Writing to please?’ By penning intricately interwoven life stories of this extraordinary trio in a way that would please the harshest of critics and the most dyspeptic of readers.
In allowing us a taste of sorrow, Morgan ladles out a host of feelings — feelings that make up three of the world’s most beloved authors. The emotional and the cerebral seesaw is set just right in this pulsating decoding of the Brontë psyche and personalities.(Shinie Antony)
If you've ever wished you had gone to England's University of Oxford, here's your chance. The 2011 Oxford Experience is a one-week residential course at Christ Church, one of the most prestigious and beautiful of Oxford colleges. You can take one or more one-week programs during the period from July 10 to Aug. 13. The courses cover some 50 subjects as varied as The Brontës, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Victorian Scandals, and Opera in the Age of Bel Canto.Jan Freeman discussing the use of the word 'complected' in the Boston Globe:
Still, if complected had been a favorite of Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, it might be the standard form today.Geekosystem discusses Anne Rice's opinions about Twilight:
Her opinion of the Twilight books is largely positive, however. She points out that love between an older, threatening, but protective male and a young, weak, and vulnerable female is an old and legitimate trope. Considering that we do have some affection for Jane Eyre, we have to reluctantly admit that we see her point.We adore a happy ending! and Lone Star Concerto briefly posts about Wuthering Heights 2009; 667B Baker Street reviews (in a rather too purist way) April Lindner's Jane.
On the other hand, did Jane Eyre have two sequels and screaming fangirls? Well… actually it probably did have the 17th century equivalent of the latter. (Susana Polo)
What have you sacrificed for your art?Entertainment Weekly defines with a Brontë metaphore the relationship (or former relationship, we don't really know the present status) between Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart:
I don't think I've sacrificed anything. I've made choices: on one curious day in December 1990, I was offered the chance to take over as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company; then my agent rang and said I'd been asked to make a film of Wuthering Heights with Ralph Fiennes. I chose the RSC, of course, which meant I took a particular path. But I don't regret it. (Laura Barnett)
What I do know is that their relationship has been disseminated through the media not merely to boost ratings or to sell magazines but as a way to burnish the Charlotte-Brontë-meets-James-Dean-meets-the-undead swoony mystique of the Twilight movies. (Owen Gleiberman)Oxford American contextualises the work of the writer Tania James:
All of her stories, she reasons, might be considered responses to the fish-out-of-water stories that inspired her: Jane Eyre, for instance; A House for Mr. Biswas; Emily Dickinson’s poems. (Marion Field)Boston Review posts about the ethical power of poetry:
No matter how loyal and unswerving one’s personal and public commitments—to a love partner, a country, an idea—part of our interior remains capable of change. It is this part of our interior—this region of reversibility that is like a sheet of spun fabric one nanometer thick—that literature addresses. Far from being a threat to our commitments, this interior silk fabric that makes us labile and open enables us actively to re-consent each day to the people and places we are ever more deeply committed to. It also makes us open to new commitments. All genres of literature address this part of us: that is why anti-theatrical tracts are so frightened of the theatre; that is why it is impossible to predict which fictional person any one of us will identify with when reading Antony and Cleopatra or Wuthering Heights. (Elaine Scarry)Vice describes the MTV reality TV series The Hills as
The Hills is Wuthering Heights for the Internet Age, and its characters speak in emoticons. It reminds us that people, even the beautiful ones, are damaged and weird, stuttering and mumbling and not making eye contact or knowing what to do with our hands. (John Saward)Riiighht... is that what Wuthering Heights is supposed to be about?
Think "goth," and images of Anne Rice-era vampires (pre-Twilight) and black leather-clad bands such as Bauhaus, the Sisters of Mercy and Alien Sex Fiend will often come flooding forward. The word became a cliché in the music world long before it became unfashionable, with black mascara and black lace gloves the order of the day.Slate talks about the CW remake of Beauty and the Beast:
But to many, those overplayed images had little to do with the gothic art that is in turn romantic and devastatingly sad. Look at pre-Raphaelite art and, while the skin is pale, the eyes are not smudged with black and nobody looks like a Robert Smith-style death-mime.
The dark, poetic lyrics of Nick Cave and even Morrissey, certainly Kate Bush, capture that feeling beautifully — that Wuthering Heights (book and song) feeling of having love within your grasp and having it torn away before drowning in a sea of grief. (Brett Callwood)
Men may be violent and emotionally abusive because of damage they suffered. But that doesn't mean that their behavior is charming, or excusable, or that Heathcliff or the Beast should be anyone's dream boy. (Alyssa Rosenberg)The Telegraph illustrates an article about the raising costs of restoring listed churches with a picture of
St Michael & all Angels church in Haworth, West Yorkshire, where the Brontës are buried, [and which] is undergoing renovation following lead thefts.Linkiesta (Italy) has an ongoing discussion about the roles of women:
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë fa prevalere la protagonista (descritta come dai lineamenti pronunciati) alla bellissima Blanche Ingram sul cuore di Rochester, non per esaltare la moralità dell’eroina, ma per proporre un nuovo modello di donna in cui intelligenza voglia dire consapevolezza di avere il diritto di autodeterminarsi. (...)L'Illustré (Switzerland) describes as follows the work of the comic artist Margaux Kindhauser:
Paradossalmente se Charlotte Brontë auspicava una donna in grado di decidere del proprio destino, in grado di comportarsi alla pari dell’altro sesso (cosa quasi blasfema per un mondo a misura d’UOMO) utilizzando l’espediente della sua non bellezza solo come dettaglio iniziale per catturare l’attenzione del lettore dell’epoca, abituato a sognare eroine belle e di alto lignaggio come sole elette ai migliori matrimoni nobili, per poi introdurlo verso l’idea che la donna possa pretendere di creare se stessa liberamente anche – e, forse, soprattutto – al matrimonio.
Le “donne di Vito Kahlun” potranno forse ispirarsi al modello “Eyre” da istitutrice super velata, ma il loro velarsi sarà esclusivamente finalizzato a entrare nella categoria brave ragazze da sposare..esattamente tutto l’opposto di quello che Charlotte Brontë voleva per le donne nel 1847! (Virginia Odoarde) (Translation)
Pour conjuguer ses envies de raconter elle-même ses histoires et de les mettre en images, Margaux Kindhauser choisit la BD sous le nom de Mara. Autodidacte, elle s’inspire de dessinateurs français (Loisel, Yslaire) et d’ambiances gothiques (Sherlock Holmes, les sœurs Brontë). (Stéphanie Billeter) (Translation)El Mundo (Spain) recommends summer reads:
'El caso de Charles Dexter Ward', de H. P. Lovecraft. [Published by] Alianza. Desde 'Vathek' o 'Cumbres borrascosas' o 'Frankenstein', la Historia de la literatura gótica culmina aquí. (Álvaro Cortina) (Translation).Bengal Reads interviews the author Chelsea M. Cameron:
Will you tell us about your-self and your books?PtitBlog (in French) reviews negatively Jane Eyre 2011, movieshollywoodfinest, In need of a Prince Charming. I don't think so..., Little J Art, Arts & Cie, Le Blog de Marie la Turtue and Les Menus Plaisirs (all three in French) think exactly the opposite; Classics///Hits reviews Agnes Grey; Layers of Though posts about one Jane Eyre audiobook; A Northern Witch lives now in Haworth; Pockeblogg (in Swedish) and Books, Tea & Sweet Apple Pie review Jane Eyre; Dingley Bell (in French) and Książkowe Podróżowanie (in Polish) post about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Book 42 reviews Wuthering Heights; Esculpiendo el Tiempo (in Spanish) talks about its 1939 version;
I'm a YA writer from Maine. Lover of things random and ridiculous, Jane Austen/Charlotte and Emily Brontë Fan girl, red velvet cake enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world's worst video gamer
She’s the title character in Jane Eyre, due out later this year, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and co-starring Michael Fassbender (Hunger). “There were certain moments on set where I’d go, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ ” Wasikowska said. “You can’t believe you’ve been trusted with a character like Jane Eyre, and you want to do her justice. In the novel, she’s 18, but she’s always been played by older actresses. It’s kind of fun to play her as a teenager, with these insane responsibilities. If she was living in our time, she’d really thrive.” (Johanna Schneller)The Irish Times asks several writers about good novel endings. Tishani Doshi says:
But what I really love are intoxicating endings; endings that leave you with an aftertaste, an essence of the book. Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez are all modern-day masters in this regard, but my favourite is probably Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights : “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” (Sinéad Gleeson)Art Daily announces that Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts series will be exhibited in Brooklyn in October:
Sam Taylor-Wood’s 2008 photographic exploration of the Yorkshire moors, Ghosts, is the latest exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. On view from October 30, 2010, through August 14, 2011, the series was inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic Victorian novel, Wuthering Heights, and its legendary atmospheric descriptions of the bleak, wild landscape.Curiously, the ending was something that 1 Million Words in a blog review didn't like.
For many years, Taylor-Wood kept a country house in the same West Yorkshire region where Emily Brontë and her famous literary and artistic family lived. Drawing inspiration from the Brontë sisters’ gothic romantic fiction, the artist followed the footpath from the stone parsonage where the Brontës lived and died up across the moors to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged setting of Wuthering Heights. In her photographs, she captures the stark and haunting character of the windswept moors and gray skies surrounding the area of Top Withens.
Surrounded by this sexually-charged atmosphere, Keith spends his summer reading classic novels about love, romance and (heavily-veiled) sex, from Richardson’s 18th-century classic PAMELA to the works of Austen, the Brontë sisters, Eliot and Dickens. In each one, he absorbs something of the message of the sexual politics of years past, even as he tries --- and often fails --- to interpret those of his own time. (Norah Piehl)The success of Marvel comics' adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the new release of Sense and Sensibility points to the possibility of a Marvel Jane Eyre according to Keri Luna in the LA Geek Culture Examiner:
When asked if we can expect to see Mr. Knightley gently scolding his Emma, or Jane Eyre falling for Mr. Rochester in a Marvel Illustrated comic anytime soon, Macchio admits they are waiting to see how the hardcover book of Sense and Sensibility will be received, but if there is an audience, he added, “Why not?”SecondAct lists several one-hit literary wonders. Including our Emily of course:
Emily Brontë, who died in 1848 of tuberculosis, a year after the publication of her only novel, the innovative Wuthering Heights. (Patrick J. Kiger)The Times talks about Sofi Oksanen who seems to think that the only remarkable female artists around are the Brontës:
She then became fascinated with art history and world history, and remembers trying to find out why there were so few great women artists. As for literature, “We can be happy about the Brontë sisters but that’s about it,” she says. She views herself as part of a strong female literary heritage in Finland, though (“Half of our successful authors are women, so you don’t feel on the margins”) and is strikingly matter-of-fact about the success of her novel.El Periódico de Aragón (Spain) is a strong contender to the blunder of the year:
Esa miss Bennet del título es una de las heroínas de Jane Eyre en Orgullo y prejuicio, la hermana que en la historia original había quedado un tanto oscurecida frente al protagonismo emocional de las dos Bennet más brillantes, Elisabeth y Jane. (Google translation) (Juan Bolea)Público (Spain) recommends Minae Mizumura's A Real Novel for this summer:
Y luego está ese libro de 700 páginas que no pesa en la maleta. Se trata de Una novela real, de la japonesa Minae Mizumura. "Una visión posmoderna de Cumbres Borrascosas", dice la argentina Gabriela Cabezón, autora de la excelente La Virgen cabeza. Amor, humor o sangre. El verbo es el mismo: disfrutar. (Paula Corroto) (Google translation)Our Twilight zone today comes from Italy:
Rispetto alle cronache di Vampiri di Anne Rice (l'autrice, per intendersi, del best seller Intervista con il vampiro), i non morti della Mayer non respirano l'atmosfera gotica e mortifera di una torrida Louisiana, ma si accontentano di un romanticismo d'accatto che profuma più di Federico Moccia che di Cime Tempestose, tanto per citare uno dei libri preferiti da Edward Cullen. (Lord Maxwell in MoviEye.it) (Google translation)More Moccia than Brontë seems approppriate for Twilight.
и: Какие книги вы сами читали в детстве?The Denver Post publishes an excerpt from The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman which contains a Wuthering Heights reference, Laura's Reviews completes (and summarises) the All About the Brontës Challenge with a review of Jane Eyre 1970. Mundo Cretino posts about Wuthering Heights 1939 (in Spanish). Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers also talks about Emily Brontë's novel. Breezy Originals shares her pictures of a trip to Brontë Country.
эндрюс: Мой отец был учителем литературы и формировал мои вкусы. Впервые в книжный магазин он привел меня, когда мне было около девяти лет. И книжка, которую мы в тот раз купили, навсегда осталась в моем сердце. Это сказочная повесть "Маленькие серые человечки" - о трех гномах, отправившихся на поиски своего пропавшего брата. И, безусловно, Чарльз Диккенс, Джейн Остин, сестры Бронте, словом, английская классическая литература. (Вита Рамм) (Google translation)
Where do outsider musicians go if the mainstream never lets them in? They stay outside, clawing at the window panes like Emily Brontë ghosts. (Simon Price)The Daily Mirror recommends Haworth's Youth Hostel:
Set in Brontë country, the YHA Haworth, was built in 1884 as a private home. Décor is seriously upmarket with a grand stone portico leading through stained-glass doors into a soaring lobby, while up the grand oak staircase is a carved upper gallery.The New York Times doesn't like EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey:
Don’t expect the rooms (singles to eight-bed dorms) to have the same level of luxury, but they still have a certain faded grandeur with high ceilings and tiled fireplaces.
On the ground-floor is the only double bedroom, with bunk above, and private disabled-access bathroom; otherwise the only en-suite is one of the six-bed dorms.
An upper floor has more rooms in the old servants’ quarters with mind-your-head black beams and views over the village and moors beyond. Breakfast is served in the large dining room, bistro meals offered nightly, though it’s worth a walk into cute Haworth village. (Marjorie Yue)
Even though James writes like a Brontë devoid of talent, her saga is the first smash hit in the era of “Mommy’s naughty reader,” as a 10-year-old dubbed it in The Wall Street Journal. (...) Anne Rice,In a Hole, Under the Hill... and Un Lector Indiscreto (in Spanish) review Jane Eyre; Emoções à flor da pele (in Portuguese) reviews Wuthering Heights; Le Blog de l'École des lettres is reviewing the recent French edition of Emily Brontë's poems; Strambergare (in Swedish) and Heldinne's Reis (in Dutch) review Wuthering Heights 2011; Zvirzdins at Large posts about Jane Eyre 2011; Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife reviews BabyLit's Jane Eyre: Little Miss Brontë; Rebekah Loper, Writer reviews A Breath of Eyre.
the godmother of vampire and SM fantasies, told me that “Twilight is like Jane Eyre”. Or Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. As is Fifty Shades of Grey. A mousy, virginal girl, who is spirited beneath her shy demeanour, falls in love with a rich, arrogant man. She learns that he’s damaged, but decides to persevere and heal him through her transforming love. HEA, as they say in romantica: Happily Ever After.(Maureen Dowd)
Jane Eyre. After my mother died, my father sent my sisters and me to a boarding school where we slept in metal beds in the attic, with a nun on each corner. There was one bathtub and we’d line up for baths every night . . . When I read this book in high school, I ate it up, especially Jane’s courage as she went into the world. (Barbara Hoffman)More preValentine articles. This one on Varsity talks about classic literature and love:
Even recent crazes like the dreaded Twilight series show us how the romantic mindset of the human race stays the same. That modern day unattainable hero Edward Cullen, the flawed man in need of saving, is just Heathcliff with fangs; moody, broody and very Byronic.Richmond Times-Dispatch reviews The Flight of Gemma Hardy:
The Brontë sisters made a significant contribution to my lessons in love, with Emily telling me never to go off and marry someone I don’t love, like silly Cathy in Wuthering Heights, but also to avoid marrying men who’ll kill my dog and love other women – like Heathcliff does. From Jane Eyre I learned to never settle for being second best, not to become imprisoned by love or adhere to conventions, ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being’. Oh, and to walk away from married men (or, on reflection, not – hopefully the crazy wife will soon jump off a burning building and he’ll become available). (Thea Hawlin)
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."
With that spare sentence in the 19th century, Charlotte Brontë began "Jane Eyre," the classic and beloved story of a girl's tumultuous journey into adulthood while facing cruelty, deprivation and deception.
"We did not go for a walk on the first day of the year."
And with those words, Margot Livesey starts "The Flight of Gemma Hardy," a reimaging of "Jane Eyre" that includes elements of Livesey's life and a novel that transports the reader into a gripping, affecting and ultimately healing world. (...)
Inspired by "Jane Eyre" but never merely derivative, "The Flight of Gemma Hardy" will, of course, appeal to readers of the earlier work. But such is its power, stamped with Livesey's originality, that even those to whom "Jane Eyre" is a stranger are likely to find this a rewarding read.
Livesey, a native of Scotland who now teaches at Emerson College and lives near Boston, explains that she is "writing back" to Brontë and not simply retelling "Jane Eyre." In doing so, she succeeds greatly. Livesey has created a story of flight, but in that flight, Gemma not only flees but also eventually soars. And Livesey, the acclaimed author of seven previous novels, aims for and reaches the skies in this work of love. (Jay Strafford)
Best Costume Design is also rather all over the place. Most are expecting "Hugo" to pull it out, but a few of us have doubts. Ellwood, Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale and I are currently picking "Anonymous" (though I am by no means locked in), Stone is picking "The Artist" and Karger and Poland are picking "Jane Eyre." (Kristopher Tapley)The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviews the actress and theatre director Karla Boos:
My favorite character in fiction is ... maybe the madwoman in the attic after reading "Wide Sargasso Sea" and in general falling in love with Jean Rhys.
Though some Britons dismiss East Yorkshire as drab by comparison with the romantic heather and moors of Brontë Country to the west, in Hockney's hands the area is a riot of color — deep reds, shocking purples, splashy yellows and multiple shades of green in the trees, fields, paths and hawthorn bushes. The paintings and poster-size prints from iPad drawings evoke Van Gogh, Seurat, Rousseau and even Hockney himself from his earlier, sun-drenched period. (Henry Chu)The Albany Times Union praises the pleasures of re-reading:
I want to go back and reread those books that I claim are my favorite (including Jane Eyre, which I listened to my daughter's class discuss and realized that a good portion was lost to memory). (Donna Liquori)Short Stories reviews Jane Eyre 2011 and LAMP discusses the original novel; Forgotten Pages (in Italian) reviews Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael. Finally, a couple of YouTube videos: jeana1001 reads The Night of Storms Has Past by Emily Brontë and NirvanaCarrick uploads a series of pictures of the Haworth Parsonage surroundings.
Vampires are so popular right now because intimate human relationships have become completely demythified, says del Toro. Vampires, like Edward Cullen, from "Twilight" are fused with the Gothic bad boy romantic lead myth to create a lover more eternal than Heathcliff and more chaste than a choirboy. "For the first time in the culture of mankind, the vampire has been sort of defanged by making them celibate and asexual as opposed to polysexual, like Anne Rice did," he says. "They have been Mormonized, so to speak, into being a sanitized creature." But the vampires in del Toro's novels are anything but sanitized: "The only sensuality in 'The Strain' books is the sensuality of feeding that pleases the predator, but doesn’t please the prey."He certainly knows what he's talking about: he knows about monsters and Wuthering Heights 1939 is the first film he remembers watching.
Ludlam's script is a veritable tour de force of ridiculousness. A successful production of this mash-up of high and low culture looks something like a deranged drag revue re-enactment of Emily Brontë's “Wuthering Heights” staged in an amusement park's haunted house ride. (Erin Keane)Isn't that a fantastic description?
5. Choose two characters from literature and write about them having to spend time together.Hmmm... we wonder.
If Elizabeth Bennett and Jane Eyre had to share a carriage ride, would they get along? (Charity Hendrix)
What’s this piece of furniture we’re going to take your picture with?Good one! Emily Brontë simply calls it a bench, though:
It’s a “settee,” it’s a bench or seat, but the reason it has the high back and low seat is because very old homes were drafty, so it was like their couch, but the back blocked the draught flowing onto the person. You might have this in front of the fireplace or in some cases in the kitchen. If you read “Wuthering Heights” with Heathcliff and Catherine, Heathcliff was sitting on a settee and Catherine was talking to her maid about marrying another man, and it upset Heathcliff to the point where he ran away.
She didn’t know he was sitting in the room because of the high back of the settee. (Chuck Humel)
Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff’s presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevented by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started, and bade her hush! (Wuthering Heights, chapter IX)The Reading Eagle features a Wyomissing High School senior who has won the Berks County Outstanding Young Woman competition. Apparently she
to read classic books such as "Jane Eyre" (Kristin Boyd)The House of Dead Maids author Clare B. Dunkle is interviewed today by Babbling Flow.
So, 2020 is over now. It's history. History, for real. We thought that 9/11 was the beginning of the 21st century, the year that redefined our world and brought a slow transition to a new era. But we were wrong. The real disruption came in 2020. It had to be a virus, the humblest things that God has put upon this earth, quoting H.G. Wells, which demoted the human race (for once, a planetary species) of their self-attributed power over the planet. We know, of course, that it is naive to think that this lesson in humility will last. When the pandemic is over (and eventually it will be, like the ones that preceded it) humankind will return to its old ways. But in a different world... Lampedusa style. You know: "everything must change so that everything can stay the same".
But, we don't want to be in a dark mood entering this new year. We want to believe that 2021 will be better and we have some objective facts to help convince ourselves: a change of administration in the US, the depressing (but the alternative was even worst) Brexit deal and above all, the arrival of the first COVID-19 vaccines... Yes, 2020 has been an awful year but in its last weeks it seems to have been trying to redeem itself.
The 2021 Brontë year will not be very different from the non-Brontë one. Uncertainty is the new currency. Mostly we don't know but these are the few things that we do know:
We know that the Brontë Parsonage Museum, when it opens again, will continue for the whole year with its Anne Brontë exhibition Amid the Brave and Strong abruptly interrupted in March. Hopefully, the No Soft Nonsense mini-exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York will stay open until February, as originally planned. The Brontë Society bicentenary conference, 'I wished to tell the truth': Anne Brontë at 200 has been rescheduled for September. Same place, Scarborough, just one year later. On the other hand, in Thornton, we expect some news for the Brontë Birthplace this January: "a recognisable change at The Bronte Birthplace working with Bradford Civic Society, author Dr Michael Stewart and photographer Craig Sugden".
Another exciting project is a new adaptation (by Sara Gmitter) of Villette to be performed by the Chicago based Lookingglass Company. Originally intended to be premiered in February, it is unknown when it will finally go on stage, but the good news is that it is still listed among the company's upcoming season shows.
Some of these projects may finally go online. But we know for sure one that will be premiered virtually. The rock band musical Glass Town by Miriam Pultro will premiere online at the Adelaide Fringe Festival (March).
We have fiction around the Brontës themselves: Bella Ellis's third Brontë Mysteries novels, The Rise of the Red Monarch where all of the Brontë siblings 'take a secret trip to London, after being called upon to help by Anne’s former charge and Branwell’s mistress’s daughter Lydia who recently eloped with a young actor. Her new husband has been kidnapped' (November).
Tell us about your upcoming projects.The Wall Street Journal also publishes an interview with the actress:
I just finished “Jane Eyre” two weeks ago and it’s such a great character. We didn’t change the story at all, but I still feel it’s different from your typical period film. Plus, I worked with Judi Dench and Jamie Bell. Judi is the coolest woman in the world. She completely caught me off guard because she was so friendly and a lot of fun. (Cindy Pearlman)
“The funny thing is I read the book last year and I was five chapters in and I emailed my agent—this would be really cool, is there a script around? And like a month later it came up,” Wasikowska says.We don't know if you know the new (Penguin Classics)REDTM collection. If you don't we suggest you take a look at the covers and the humanitarian project associated with it. Penguin Classics had asked their readers to choose the next (RED)TM book to be published next Christmas:
So does she plan to start reading some other classics, like “Pride and Prejudice,” to see if that somehow spurs other literary adaptions to come her way?
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Wasikowska says, smiling. (Christopher John Farley)
We are delighted to announce that the winner is... Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë... as voted by you! Look out for theNo preview yet, though.edition that will be published 1st December 2010.
The Guardian talks about the wonders of reading aloud:To promote this programme, the Reader Organisation is about to launch an anthology of prose and poetry, A Little, Aloud, for reading out in one of the hundreds of "read aloud" groups that have been springing up across the UK. It's an eclectic volume, with well-chosen gobbets from Tennyson, Dickens, Saki and Yeats as well as Elizabeth Jennings, Anna Sewell, the Brontes, Louisa M Alcott and Joanne Harris. (Robert McCrum)The book will appear on September 30.
She knew Latin, loved George Eliot and the Brontës, and at 16 entered what is now Mount Holyoke College. (Sherri Hallgren)The Island Packet reviews A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick:
It would be unfair to describe any more of the plot beyond saying that the reader will not be able to relax any more than the sex-obsessed characters. The novel, which has been compared to "Wuthering Heights" and "Rebecca," has been called "suspenseful and erotic" and "a dream of betrayal and eroticism whose impact remains after the fever has passed." It is certainly all of that. (Don McKinney)The Modesto Bee interviews local writer and poet, Claudia Newcorn:
Favorite Authors: Rudyard Kipling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Vonda McIntyre, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sara Gruen, Richard Adams, e.e. cummings, Robert Frost, Longfellow, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and dozens more. I'm a confessed bookaholic. Plus, I love a good movie with intricate plot -- if it's predictable, I yawn!Twilight zone today:
In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse we get down to the nub of things. Bella Swan (Stewart) is deeply attracted to two men. There's Edward Cullen (Pattinson), a brooding, tortured soul, part Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and part Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and he has fallen in love with Bella and wants to marry her. (The Times, Zimbabwe)
Yet “Eclipse” also brings something for the gents, aside from this story with clear Heathcliff-y touches. (Elena Gorgan in Softpedia)Life in the Thumb gives her opinion about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre, Books in the Fridge reviews Shirley in German, Classic Literature Podcast continues posting podcasts of a Jane Eyre read by Elizabeth Klett. Blogs discussing Wuthering Heights: Onkar Sharma scribbles..., Preethi Anand, Look at the Stars (in Portuguese) and Réka blogja (in Hungarian).
